Transcript: In Search of the Exceptional: Unpacking the Traits of 10x Engineers
0:00 Scott Let's just say, for instance,
0:01 Scott you and I have a room of 100 people. We've been told there is one person here that is a bona fide 10x.
0:08 Scott We've got 60 minutes to identify that person.
0:12 Scott Could we do it? And how would we do it?
0:32 Brad I forgot.
0:33 Scott Yeah,
0:34 Scott that's a great question.
0:35 Scott How many CTOs does it take to get a podcast started,
0:37 Scott Brad?
0:38 Brad Welcome to another episode of the How Many CTOs Does It Take podcast.
0:43 Brad I'm Brad Hefta-Gaub. This is my co-host.
0:46 Scott Scott Bullrad.
0:48 Brad And we're here to talk about the challenges of being a CTO,
0:52 Brad leading engineering teams,
0:54 Brad getting the best out of developers.
0:59 Brad I, you and I were chatting recently, Scott,
1:02 Brad about the question of velocity.
1:05 Brad And one of the conversations that came out of that was we talked about the idea of, you know, I think that when business owners say,
1:14 Brad I want everyone working, you know, I want velocity,
1:16 Brad velocity,
1:16 Brad I had the hypothesis that I think they all want every engineer to be a 10x engineer.
1:22 Scott Mm
1:22 Brad And
1:22 Scott -hmm.
1:22 Brad I think you said to me at that point.
1:24 Brad Well, what exactly is a 10x engineer and what are the attributes of a 10x engineer?
1:30 Brad So I figured let's talk about that.
1:32 Brad What do we think a 10x engineer really is?
1:34 Scott Yeah. Well,
1:35 Scott let's answer that question.
1:36 Scott And I think we start with a different question,
1:38 Scott which is, do we believe that it's true that there are 10X engineers?
1:43 Brad I do.
1:44 Scott I do also.
1:45 Scott Okay, easy.
1:46 Scott Well, okay, now move on. Onward.
1:48 Scott Okay.
1:52 Brad Yes, I think I mean, well,
1:55 Brad you know, like what what is it you've said to me before, like objective measures are one thing, but oftentimes we know it in our gut.
2:04 Scott Yeah.
2:04 Brad Yeah.
2:05 Brad And I think that like, yeah,
2:09 Brad my gut is like, yeah, there's engineers that I've known and worked with in my career where it's just like, yeah,
2:15 Brad that that engineer, that guy or gal gets stuff done like.
2:20 Brad way, way more impact than everyone else on the team.
2:25 Scott Yeah. And what is, so I think, yeah. And what is it? What are the parts of that?
2:30 Scott If we were going to make a scorecard to evaluate checklist,
2:32 Scott what would we put on it?
2:34 Scott Well,
2:34 Scott I have a few thoughts. I'll kick us off.
2:36 Brad Yeah.
2:36 Scott Let's go back and forth. We'll ping pong it back and forth.
2:38 Brad Sounds good.
2:40 Scott I mean, the first thing you have to say is that some people are just smarter than other people.
2:47 Brad for sure
2:49 Scott I cannot dunk a basketball, but LeBron James can dunk a basketball.
2:55 Scott We both play basketball.
2:56 Scott LeBron James and I both play basketball.
2:59 Scott He can dunk. I cannot dunk.
3:02 Scott Other than that, we're totally the same.
3:04 Scott And the reason he can dunk is because he is taller than me by about a foot.
3:12 Brad Yeah.
3:12 Scott And so now that's a physical capability.
3:15 Scott I would, you know, I said LeBron and I were the same. That's probably not true.
3:20 Scott He probably has a better natural gift intuition for basketball than
3:27 Brad Well,
3:28 Brad he's
3:28 Scott I
3:28 Brad also
3:28 Scott have.
3:28 Brad done tens of thousands of more hours of basketball in his lifetime than you have in your equivalent lifetime.
3:36 Scott It's 100% true.
3:37 Scott And I would then flip it around and say, I probably have a more natural intuition for how a computer works than LeBron.
3:44 Scott Now, I've never met LeBron. He might be running his own network at his house totally nerding out on his own time, whatever.
3:50 Scott I have no idea.
3:51 Scott I think probably not,
3:53 Scott but he might be.
3:53 Scott But like I have more of an intuition for how computers work. He has a more intuition for how players tend to run around a basketball court.
4:02 Brad I think that's probably because of, you know, like you said, like how much time you've put into it, how much interest you paid in it, how much, you know, it was a curiosity that you had early in your life. It was a curiosity that you had early in his life, probably.
4:14 Brad And so my
4:15 Scott Yeah,
4:15 Brad instinct
4:15 Scott but
4:15 Brad is,
4:15 Scott I think there's a nature versus nurture question.
4:20 Scott I think there is a nature piece there.
4:22 Brad all right, I'm willing to accept that for the 10x engineers out there, there's probably a component of.
4:28 Brad nature that exists in these 10x engineers which i think is your point okay
4:32 Scott Yeah, that is my point.
4:33 Scott That's exactly my point.
4:35 Brad and then i was kind of like leaning on the nurture piece of it and i but i also think
4:40 Brad there's probably a nurture piece so if you're going to ping with nature i'm going to pong with nurture and i think i think that the 10x engineers that i have known the 10x engineers that i've worked with in my life
4:53 Brad had this just innate unstoppable curiosity and interest in in writing code and and and making computers do cool shit and
5:08 Scott Mm-hmm.
5:09 Brad um and and probably like if if you sort of assume all engineers have at least some of that
5:20 Brad The 10x engineers had that thing,
5:22 Brad this idea that they couldn't stop just thinking about engineering,
5:27 Brad thinking about making computers do things.
5:30 Brad That was dialed all the way up.
5:32 Brad So that's my Pong team name.
5:34 Scott okay um i'm going to add something to that with so many oh gosh i got like a list of things in my mind actually i want to pause for a second i think i've worked with
5:45 Scott less than half a dozen 10xers in my career yeah
5:48 Brad Yeah, that's what I think we had a podcast about this where we're talking about velocity and this topic came up. And we tried to estimate the percentage and I threw out a very small number one in a thousand you sort of said I think it's closer closer to one in 100.
6:03 Brad And then I kind of I took that challenge and I was like yeah yeah I guess you know out of the thousand
6:07 Scott yeah
6:07 Brad or
6:07 Scott maybe
6:07 Brad so engineers.
6:08 Scott it's a little higher but yeah okay so all right
6:10 Brad But I think a dozen or two dozen is right like to me.
6:12 Brad For me, I feel like I've worked with a thousand engineers in my career over the last 30 plus years.
6:16 Brad And I would say like, you know, I feel like I was at places that attracted really amazing talent.
6:21 Brad And it
6:22 Scott Yeah.
6:22 Brad still was, you know, 20 of the people I worked with would be really in this category that I think of as 10x engineer.
6:29 Scott Yeah.
6:30 Scott Yeah.
6:30 Scott Okay.
6:31 Scott So you talked about they just have a desire to do it.
6:34 Scott I'll come back and say.
6:37 Scott The best engineers I've worked with have an abstract understanding of how different technologies are tools for different jobs.
6:47 Scott Now, they don't always, they're not like always using different technologies, but I'm thinking of one in particular and he could very easily articulate like, okay, well.
6:59 Scott this is what java is good at and this is what c sharp is good at and this is what python is good at and this is what ruby's good at and the reason they're good at that is because they even the reason they could say those languages were good at those things is because the 10xer even sort of knew the history like oh look java was really it was these bunch of guys they were working in c++ that was their reaction to challenges they faced there so they even they love it so much like you were saying that they even know
7:26 Scott So because it is an evolution of ideas,
7:29 Scott they know that and they can articulate that as well.
7:34 Scott But I think knowing how those things work so intuitively then in turn allows them, the combination of the two things we're saying here,
7:42 Scott allows them to use it.
7:44 Scott Use these tools in really creative and powerful ways.
7:48 Brad Yeah,
7:49 Brad I think I 100% agree with that. That's a great one.
7:51 Brad And I feel like I'll ping back off of that one with something similar.
7:58 Brad And I think this is going to be a little controversial, but I'm going to go out on a limb on this one.
8:03 Brad The 10Xers that I worked with.
8:07 Brad They all had really, really good computer science fundamentals.
8:14 Brad Now, many of them got there through classical computer science learning,
8:20 Brad like they had a computer science degree.
8:23 Brad But what I really mean by that is like they understand what an operating system really is doing. They understand what what memory management is all about. They understand.
8:33 Brad And the idea of, you know, you know, how how what,
8:39 Brad you know, data structures like they really understand these things at a really.
8:43 Brad So like we think about like the classic like computer science degree, it's like you take a data structures class,
8:49 Brad you take a languages class and that languages class exposes you all different types of languages.
8:53 Brad You take a operating system class,
8:55 Brad you take a compiler class where you build a compiler. You know, these are.
8:58 Brad These
8:58 Scott Mm hmm.
8:58 Brad are the classes that are in a traditional computer science program,
9:02 Brad and you didn't necessarily have to get that degree,
9:04 Brad but you have gotten that fundamental education. So I feel like all the 10Xers I've worked with just really understood that stuff very well.
9:16 Scott Yeah,
9:16 Scott that's true.
9:18 Scott Okay,
9:19 Scott here's another one.
9:21 Scott They all are capable and are very effective actually at working independently.
9:28 Scott In fact,
9:29 Scott actually,
9:30 Scott they might even,
9:32 Scott their strength might be working independently. I have to think about that one for a second.
9:36 Brad Interesting.
9:36 Scott But the notion of going and sitting down at their computer.
9:42 Scott and to use an expression hammering something out like
9:45 Brad Yeah.
9:45 Scott they're good at like i'm gonna go get this done right and often often i'm thinking of one person i'm out because we joked about this person the rest of us would be talking about something and this person just was over their computer and just did it right they have a uh they have a
10:07 Scott some sort of internal intangible quality of just getting a thing done.
10:11 Brad Yeah, I agree with that statement.
10:12 Brad I agree with you. You sort of said two things there.
10:14 Brad One was the sort of like the desire to just get it done, the innate quality of just getting something done,
10:19 Brad hammering it out.
10:20 Brad And then you sort of added in this independent model. And I think that's true.
10:26 Brad Like, I think when I really think about the 10xers that I've worked with, they all.
10:32 Brad all functioned very very effectively by themselves right now they that doesn't necessarily mean they aren't good at working with an organization with a group of people and with a team but they are really good working on their own
10:44 Scott That's right.
10:44 Scott That's all I was trying to say.
10:45 Scott I would actually say of the ones I'm thinking of, they're actually all really good at working with each other too.
10:51 Scott And they all like to do things like pair program.
10:54 Scott In fact, I think in general they think two heads is better than one.
10:58 Brad Yeah,
10:58 Brad I think that's fair too.
11:00 Brad So they're completely effective at working on their own and hammering something out.
11:03 Brad And they are also very open and collaborative in working with another 10Xer.
11:12 Scott Yeah,
11:12 Scott yeah.
11:13 Scott Or teaching.
11:13 Scott They're all good teachers, the ones I'm thinking of.
11:17 Brad I think that's fair, too.
11:18 Scott It's pinged back to you.
11:20 Brad All right, so let's see.
11:21 Brad I believe that all the 10xers I've ever worked with were also really good at understanding the objective,
11:31 Brad the assignment.
11:33 Brad They were good and I and I and I would mostly say that's like they were good at understanding the needs of whoever the.
11:41 Brad customer stakeholder were,
11:43 Brad even when those needs might be a little bit more
11:48 Brad uh ethereal like oh i'm just trying to make this super fast the super fast uh you know raid disk system over a network or something like that that's not necessarily like i you know i'm talking in the customer language but they really understood the fundamental problem of what they were trying to accomplish
12:05 Scott The listener cannot hear me nodding my head vigorously in agreement with that. I was going to, my,
12:11 Scott your pong back to me, I was going to say.
12:13 Scott They they're very good at taking whatever requirements are handed to them.
12:20 Scott I would actually branch it in two ways. I was going to say they're good in taking the requirements and turning it into a plan.
12:27 Scott But I would actually say that here's another piece that they're good at.
12:31 Scott Frequently requirements are unclear.
12:33 Scott Customers, users, whatever,
12:34 Scott aren't very good at articulating what they want.
12:37 Scott Good at sort
12:38 Brad Yep.
12:38 Scott of synthesizing that together and sort of saying,
12:40 Scott okay,
12:41 Scott I think what you're saying, sometimes they don't even say this. They just, they think it's like, okay, I think what this person is saying is this.
12:47 Scott And then turning that into something and often coming back and saying,
12:51 Scott is this what you want?
12:52 Brad I built it because this is what I knew you
12:55 Scott Yeah,
12:55 Brad wanted.
12:55 Scott those are definitely that.
12:57 Scott So, you know, it's interesting coming back to the independence point.
13:00 Scott There is some EQ there.
13:02 Brad Yeah.
13:02 Scott You know, there is definitely some EQ.
13:04 Brad Huge EQ.
13:06 Brad Huge EQ.
13:07 Brad And I think that like if as we're still continuing down the road of like what are examples of the attributes that these 10Xers that we've worked with have,
13:14 Brad I don't want to get into the realm of like.
13:17 Brad Oh, and if you don't have that, then this is a place
13:20 Scott Yeah
13:20 Brad you might get stuck on becoming a 10 Xer.
13:22 Brad But I will say that like that, that EQ piece.
13:27 Brad Yeah,
13:27 Brad I've seen some people that are right on the cusp of being 10 Xers, but that they're missing that piece.
13:32 Brad And that keeps them from really achieving.
13:37 Brad the potential oh
13:37 Scott Yeah.
13:39 Scott Okay,
13:39 Scott let's see here.
13:40 Scott Oh,
13:40 Scott I just pinged EQ,
13:42 Scott so I was ponging back to you.
13:44 Brad man okay all
13:45 Scott While you're thinking,
13:46 Scott I want to go back to the very first thing you said to fill some time.
13:50 Scott They love
13:50 Brad right
13:50 Scott it.
13:51 Scott They love it.
13:52 Brad they love it they
13:54 Scott This is fun.
13:55 Brad love it yeah it's not it's not work to them right it's like it's it's it's it's fun they love it it's a challenge they love that
14:04 Brad they love learning new things they're
14:05 Scott Yeah.
14:06 Brad absolutely the first people to you know be interested in the rant the new language you know
14:13 Brad because it's like for them it's all like oh yeah let me learn about this new tech that may in fact solve a piece of the puzzle that is always out there right they recognize yeah okay i i feel like well okay i want to
14:28 Brad If you're ponging to me with the EQ,
14:31 Brad and I feel like I want to say there's a – I kind of jokingly want to say they type hella fast,
14:39 Brad right?
14:40 Scott That's true.
14:40 Brad It is actually true though,
14:42 Brad right?
14:43 Brad Like they're all really fast at writing large amounts of code.
14:48 Scott For sure.
14:49 Scott I've worked at multiple companies,
14:51 Scott by the way, where we have for fun, we have had what do you call it when you have a speed typing contest and there's a name for them.
14:58 Brad Type typing speed type test.
15:01 Scott Just yeah.
15:02 Scott Yeah,
15:03 Scott for sure.
15:04 Brad One of my favorite one of my favorite 10 extras that I worked with.
15:11 Brad Such an amazing guy.
15:12 Brad He was.
15:14 Brad He was at Real Networks, kind of like one of the lead architects of the early streaming servers.
15:19 Brad He went on to become the founder of Isilon and then Vic's success there.
15:26 Brad His name is Sujal Patel. He's an amazing guy.
15:30 Brad he is such a fast typer so fast but i would say and if if sujal ever listens to this and gives me crap about it i'll i'll i'll have a smirk on my face and say yep uh he wasn't necessarily the most accurate typer but he was such a fast typer that he would type stuff it would be wrong and he would delete it and type the correct version before you would notice that he had typed it wrong That's he great. was that you
15:56 Brad that fast of a typer he was just like and i swear like his backspace key or his delete key whichever operating system he was on that was the one that was the most worn out
16:09 Scott Okay, so some of the 10Xers I know and some of them not,
16:14 Scott it's not a universal trait,
16:15 Scott but some of them definitely have that engineer thing where they think they can do something in an hour.
16:20 Scott I think sometimes
16:21 Brad Oh, for sure.
16:21 Scott I see this.
16:23 Scott We talked about a strength is they can see a solution quickly,
16:26 Scott but sometimes it misses some of the edge cases.
16:30 Scott And it's like,
16:30 Scott oh, I can get that done in an hour.
16:32 Scott And then they get into it and it's like,
16:33 Scott oh, actually, there's a little more here to it than I thought.
16:35 Scott I've definitely seen that.
16:36 Brad But you know, what's what's funny about that, the corollary of that is that when that happens to them, they love it so much that that doesn't knock them off their game. They just go, oh, and then I had to solve it. Right.
16:47 Scott Yeah.
16:47 Brad And they come back and they're like,
16:49 Brad oh, yeah, it actually took me three hours, not one,
16:52 Brad because I found all these other corner cases that I also had to solve.
16:56 Scott We haven't talked about this. I've assumed it's always excellent technical design.
17:01 Scott Very rarely do they make errors in technical design.
17:05 Scott I mean, I can think of one TEDx or I know who made a really big error in technical design,
17:09 Scott still give them a hard time about it.
17:11 Scott But in general,
17:13 Scott the technical design is spot on out of the gate because I think that goes back to the nature piece I was talking about earlier.
17:21 Scott which is they just have an intuition for designing things well
17:24 Brad By the way, one of the things that this notion that they are great at design,
17:31 Brad the notion that they have great EQ,
17:33 Brad the notion that they sort of just have this ability to understand the problem,
17:39 Brad that matrix of...
17:46 Brad attributes that we're talking about clearly clearly indicates that a 10 xer is not about just writing code right like uh just give a bunch of tickets to an engineer and have them write that code um that that's not a 10 xer yeah
18:06 Scott Correct.
18:08 Scott Yeah.
18:09 Brad So it's not about it's not necessarily about how quickly they complete tasks.
18:15 Scott Correct.
18:16 Brad And I think that's a misnomer that people assume that if you just had 10 extras, then 10 times more tasks would get done than are getting done.
18:27 Brad It's sort of a side set of that,
18:29 Brad right?
18:29 Brad Like they solve things better.
18:32 Brad They solve things more efficiently.
18:34 Scott Yeah, and I would use the word that came to my mind and I know I've used a lot is leverage.
18:42 Scott They solve things in ways that make it easier to solve future things.
18:50 Scott or potentially
18:51 Brad Yeah.
18:52 Scott solve a bunch of future things that we don't you know it starts to embroider upon over engineering but like they solve you know maybe solve multiple problems in one and they think in a more
19:03 Scott abstract way,
19:04 Scott which
19:06 Brad Yep.
19:06 Scott I think drives a lot of that efficiency.
19:09 Scott Not only can they do this task more efficiently,
19:11 Scott the way they solved this task made 10 tasks down the road more efficient.
19:15 Brad I agree with that 100%. Let me ask you, do you feel like we've have we have we enumerated the key attributes that matter or do you think there's more?
19:26 Scott We've enumerated a lot of them.
19:28 Scott What I was thinking about was you had a room of, let's just say,
19:34 Scott for instance,
19:35 Scott you and I have a room of 100 people.
19:39 Scott And we know we've been told there is one person here that is a bona fide 10xer and then everybody else just is, you know, on the spectrum of, you know, the bell curve of talent.
19:51 Scott Right.
19:52 Scott And it's our job. We've got 60 minutes to identify that person.
19:56 Scott Could we do it? And how would we do it?
19:59 Scott I mean.
19:59 Scott getting at the interviewing and the recruiting question which is how do you how do you find these people
20:06 Brad Well, yeah,
20:07 Brad that's a great question.
20:08 Brad It's OK,
20:09 Brad so I feel like I want to say, you know it when you see it.
20:13 Brad But let me give an example of kind of the know it when you see it things that I'm used to seeing. Right.
20:22 Brad That that thing that we mentioned that they it's just insatiable on their part, they're so curious that it's so fun for them, right?
20:30 Brad Like they can't stop thinking
20:31 Scott Mm
20:31 Brad about code like that comes out very quickly when you ask them about the code that they've written,
20:41 Brad right?
20:42 Brad Which is one of why one of my favorite interview questions is tell me about the coolest piece of code you've ever written.
20:49 Brad And the
20:50 Scott Yes, yeah.
20:50 Brad 10Xers come out with that. The answer to that question,
20:55 Brad right,
20:56 Brad is just filled with technical nuance.
21:02 Brad You can see them light up when they're talking about the technical nuance of what they solved.
21:08 Brad They speak fluidly and fluidly about the fluently and fluidly about the problem that they were solving and why that was an interesting problem. Right. So so even if they're not necessarily like they don't even necessarily have to be the most.
21:27 Brad eloquent but you can you you you see it immediately and hear it immediately in the way they talk about the problems they've solved that were interesting to them that's
21:37 Scott Mm hmm.
21:37 Brad that's my answer i don't know uh
21:39 Scott That's a good one. I'll add to that.
21:41 Scott Do you know Joe Heitzberg from Seattle here?
21:43 Brad yeah i think so yeah okay
21:45 Scott He's been around a while now. He's currently the organizer of the AI Tinkers Meetup.
21:53 Brad yeah yeah
21:53 Scott which has chapters all around the world he's a real tinker he's a great guy and a long time ago i was talking to him and he was telling me how he loved to hire cs students right out of school and i was saying oh joe i find it such so hit or miss you never know what you're going to get i was like how do you how do you do it what's your secret for finding
22:15 Scott Well, and then he said, oh,
22:16 Scott well,
22:16 Scott I found just great people, great people. I said,
22:18 Scott well, what's your secret? How do you find them?
22:19 Scott He said, I asked them,
22:21 Scott what is the biggest or most meaningful, I'm not sure the right word to use,
22:27 Scott project that you've worked on outside of school?
22:29 Brad Yeah,
22:30 Brad totally.
22:31 Scott And when you find the kid that's running the eBay of Bangladesh from his dorm room,
22:36 Scott you're like,
22:36 Scott boom,
22:37 Scott I want that
22:37 Brad Yeah,
22:37 Scott guy.
22:38 Brad totally.
22:39 Brad Yeah,
22:39 Brad totally.
22:42 Brad Yeah,
22:42 Brad that's very
22:42 Scott And
22:42 Brad similar.
22:42 Scott those, you know, right.
22:43 Brad to the question I ask and the types of answers you're looking for,
22:46 Brad right?
22:47 Brad Right?
22:49 Scott That's right.
22:49 Scott Yeah.
22:50 Scott So yeah, I guess one way you filter out is you say who find ways to identify who loves this.
22:56 Brad Yeah.
22:57 Scott Right.
22:57 Scott So here, here's here's actually a way I would I would put this on the list.
23:03 Scott Who considers themselves thoroughly fluent in two programming languages?
23:09 Scott Because for me, you know, having
23:13 Brad And you're saying that as opposed
23:14 Scott to
23:14 Brad to one or at least two.
23:17 Scott one,
23:17 Brad Yeah,
23:17 Scott at
23:17 Brad yeah, yeah.
23:18 Scott least two, right?
23:19 Scott As opposed to one. Because when you work with the second one.
23:22 Scott At least from my personal experience, and I think I've talked to others about this,
23:26 Scott when you work with the second language deeply,
23:29 Scott you get a better understanding of the computer,
23:32 Scott right?
23:35 Scott Where
23:35 Brad Well,
23:35 Scott it was a by better
23:35 Brad the way,
23:35 Scott kind
23:35 Brad this is
23:36 Scott of like
23:36 Brad why this is 100
23:37 Scott the language is like a shadow and like it's a shadow of the computer kind of and you get a better understanding of the actual computer.
23:43 Brad percent agree with you. And that's one of the reasons why I think that like one of the most valuable courses in that computer science degree,
23:50 Brad if you're taking a formal computer science degree, one of the most valuable courses is your languages class,
23:54 Brad because the whole point behind that course is it's not it's about exposing you to all kinds of different types of languages.
24:00 Brad just you know like functional
24:01 Scott Mm hmm.
24:02 Brad languages versus you know procedural languages versus you know it's just it's like so important to understand like the types of shadows that can be cast on the computer to use your shadow analogy yeah
24:14 Scott Yeah,
24:14 Scott yeah, yeah.
24:15 Scott Okay,
24:16 Scott so here's another here's another question I would ask I don't know exactly how I'd frame it, but something like this.
24:21 Scott I would go around the room and make every person.
24:25 Scott write down things that they are religious about when it comes to this kind of work
24:31 Brad Oh, interesting.
24:32 Brad Okay.
24:32 Brad Tell me about how you then filter that information.
24:35 Scott there are certain types of things that people are religious about that are a signal to me that oh actually their understanding of this is not very sophisticated right i'm going to use
24:49 Scott A popular one in our industry as an example, I'm not sure it's perfect,
24:52 Scott tabs or spaces.
24:53 Brad Yeah, totally.
24:54 Scott Hey, actually, in my view, tabs or spaces doesn't matter as long as everyone just agrees on one or the other, because the problem is the problem is the mismatch.
25:04 Scott You know, and so I think you could get a sense by what people are religious about to understand their actual talent as an engineer. Right.
25:15 Brad I think that's fair.
25:17 Scott I'm not sure what I would actually be looking for or not looking for,
25:20 Scott but again,
25:20 Scott it comes back to I see what I know, but I feel like I would see green and red flags. I'd see things like, oh, that's smart.
25:27 Scott That's real, real smart what that person's saying.
25:28 Scott And I'd see things where like that person is being religious about something that I don't think that somebody should be religious about.
25:37 Scott Now maybe it's me,
25:38 Scott of course.
25:38 Brad I feel like one of the I'll tell a quick story about that, the kind of the tab spaces thing.
25:44 Brad I remember the very first time I became a manager of a team.
25:51 Brad um and i was a pretty still pretty junior engineer but i had you know risen through the ranks and people are like yeah this guy knows what he's doing and the team needed a leader and i went to one of the more senior engineers on the team and i was kind of like you know our code base is kind of a mess we don't really have any kind of coding standard it's kind of you know joe's files look totally different than bob's files it's like
26:12 Brad kind of pain and he's like yeah we should definitely have a coding standard i said cool you're super experienced what should we do and he's just like well i would accept any coding standard uh and i said wait don't but you're but i'm asking you because i really think you're an expert and he's just like well this is what i do at home in my own time but and we could do that and i'll accept that
26:37 Brad But that's
26:37 Scott Right.
26:38 Brad very different than our existing code base.
26:40 Brad Our existing code base is closer to this standard over here.
26:44 Brad And I'd be happy to just use that standard.
26:46 Brad And
26:47 Scott Yeah.
26:47 Brad at first I was like kind of like, oh,
26:49 Brad what?
26:49 Brad I didn't understand because I was so used to, you know, like my own code,
26:53 Brad like because, you know, I wrote a lot of code, you know, and so I kind of was opinionated about my code. But that was a total eye opener.
26:59 Brad I'm glad it happened early in my career because I was just like,
27:01 Brad oh, yeah,
27:02 Brad you know what? You're actually right.
27:03 Brad Doesn't matter what the coding standard is so long as we all stick to it.
27:06 Scott Yeah.
27:07 Scott If somebody, I'm trying to think of what kinds of things that a 10 Xer would be religious about,
27:12 Scott actually.
27:13 Brad Yeah.
27:14 Scott Or that a not 10Xer would be religious about.
27:18 Brad Well, I think you're right that, you know, worrying about unimportant things is probably something that.
27:24 Brad that a non-taxer would be worried about you know would be religious about i
27:29 Scott Well,
27:29 Scott actually,
27:30 Scott here's a piece of it. Do you think 10Xers, an attribute of them,
27:35 Scott is that they actually don't have a lot of religion?
27:38 Brad actually think i might say that that might be their attribute i think that their attribute might be that they don't have a lot of religion
27:45 Brad because they are exposed to so many things they're so curious about so many
27:50 Brad So many things that they're going to be way more ecumenical, you know, just in
27:54 Scott Or
27:54 Brad general.
27:54 Scott to go way back to Kevin Goldsmith,
27:56 Scott it depends,
27:58 Scott if
27:58 Brad Totally.
27:58 Scott you wanted me to, if you want the code to appear exactly the same everywhere it's printed,
28:06 Scott I'm going to be religious about spaces.
28:08 Brad Yeah,
28:09 Brad exactly.
28:10 Brad Totally.
28:13 Scott So,
28:13 Brad Well,
28:13 Scott okay, so we
28:14 Brad so and
28:14 Scott got our room of 100,
28:15 Scott we got our room of 100,
28:16 Scott and what have we done to figure out who the 10xer is?
28:19 Scott We've asked them what they're excited about,
28:20 Scott we've asked them what they're religious about.
28:22 Brad we've listened to them.
28:24 Brad And if what comes out of their mouth is not like technically fluent,
28:30 Brad clear examples of EQ,
28:33 Brad clear examples of understanding,
28:36 Brad you know, real computer science fundamentals.
28:39 Brad clear examples of them just being incredibly passionate about learning new things and doing stuff then they're then they're filtered out immediately oh
28:47 Scott Yeah, okay.
28:47 Scott I get two more attributes that I'd look for.
28:50 Scott I don't know exactly how I'd test for them.
28:52 Scott Every 10xer I know, I hate to use this phrase, but has a can-do attitude.
28:57 Scott Oh, we can do that.
28:58 Scott We can
28:59 Brad 100
28:59 Scott figure that out.
28:59 Brad 100
29:01 Scott yeah there's got to be a way to do that yeah
29:02 Brad Yeah,
29:03 Scott they're they're instantly like they're they're already solving the problem they're not talking about like oh i think this is a bad idea i don't think we can do it or that would be too hard it's they're instantly like oh okay let's see how we can write to solutioning
29:14 Brad agreed.
29:16 Brad I 100% agree.
29:17 Brad And like sometimes it can be really, really incredibly,
29:20 Brad I've got,
29:20 Brad you know, I can imagine, I remember some stories of like,
29:23 Brad you know.
29:25 Brad 10xers that i you know like the ceo says we're gonna we need to do this hard thing and i'm like man that's gonna be hard but i'm sure we can come up with a solution i'm gonna put darren on this problem and you
29:36 Scott Right.
29:36 Brad know so darren and darren's like yeah okay that's gonna be hard but i can see a path i'm gonna go i have an idea i'm gonna go attack
29:44 Scott I
29:44 Brad it
29:45 Scott can see a path.
29:46 Scott That is, to me, that is the thing right there.
29:48 Scott I can see a path.
29:51 Scott They understand the system,
29:52 Scott they understand the technology,
29:54 Scott in their mind, they have it.
29:58 Scott And so that actually leads to a question, and
30:00 Brad Yeah.
30:01 Scott this gets fundamentally at the microservices service-oriented architecture question.
30:06 Scott In order to be a 10xer,
30:08 Scott do you have to understand?
30:11 Scott kind of the whole system whatever that system is it could be one component of a bigger system or it could be the enterprise the whole system and to flip that around if that's true
30:22 Scott Then is it the case that perhaps some environments, perhaps if you've got, say,
30:27 Scott a multiple million dollar, not dollar,
30:30 Scott multiple million line of code monolith that somebody comes in and it's just a huge footprint surface area to understand that we actually have environments that make it harder to have 10xers because you can't see the solution right away.
30:46 Brad Okay, so I
30:47 Scott You see what I'm saying?
30:48 Brad want to pull on that thread a little bit because I actually think you're on to something.
30:51 Brad I think that you're, I think that you're, I'm going to go out and say one of the attributes of a 10xer is even with the most complex systems,
31:02 Brad they are able to keep almost all of it in their head.
31:08 Brad Like
31:09 Scott That's
31:09 Brad they, they, they really do understand the full breadth of the, of the platform.
31:15 Brad And, and when they first show up, you can't, you can't stop them.
31:22 Brad But going and figuring out the whole breadth of the platform,
31:25 Brad right?
31:25 Brad Like they, they, they, they, it will just be part of their own personal onboarding to a code base is they will just like, they will, they will let go digest the whole thing.
31:36 Scott Right, so...
31:38 Scott To the extent that we can make that easier,
31:40 Scott we
31:40 Brad Yeah.
31:41 Scott can increase the probability that there are 10Xers. Well,
31:44 Scott this gets another question. I was going to say we increase the probability that there are 10Xers in our midst.
31:50 Scott And so that would imply something like a 1Xer, a 2Xer, a 3Xer all the way up to a 10Xer. And maybe someone who's a 4Xer, can you change where you are on this scale?
32:00 Brad Well,
32:00 Scott Does
32:01 Brad that's what
32:01 Scott it
32:01 Brad I
32:01 Scott vary?
32:01 Brad would that's what I think would be a really interesting way to pivot this conversation.
32:05 Brad conversation okay so we got some of our listeners are listening and they're developers they're young in their career they're they're they're listening to us old CTO types and and they they're listening to this because they want to know like what can I learn from these two jokers right and they might be asking themselves okay that sounds like somebody I want to be I want to be a 10xer what do I do what do I how do I become a 10xer what do I need to do to become a 10xer
32:31 Scott understand the whole I would say without a doubt what you were just saying under understand the whole system and in fact for any of those actually anybody I'll offer a tip of advice there's a framework out there called the C4 model I think it's called C4 model.org it's it's it's not rocket science okay I'm not going to say anything that's genius here it's just a framework for modeling a system you
32:57 Scott that's it just you know and from like there's four levels i can't remember all of them the the lowest level is code i think it goes like code component container concept or something like that did i get them right
33:09 Brad So close top one
33:11 Scott what
33:11 Brad is system.
33:11 Scott were they oh
33:12 Brad You got it code code component to container to system.
33:16 Scott Oh, concept would have been better than it would have been four C's, right?
33:18 Scott I thought it was the four C system.
33:20 Brad I don't know why.
33:21 Brad It says C4.
33:22 Brad I don't know why it's not.
33:25 Scott So it's just, you know, trying to understand a system can get a little noisy because at one minute you're like looking at a method and the next minute you're
33:32 Brad trying Yeah,
33:32 Scott to understand how does the service talk to the other service. And it's just a framework for how to kind of create those four levels and draw them in pictures.
33:39 Scott And so it's just a tool, kind of a simple tool for understanding a system. And I learned it from a actually a guy we should have on this show, a guy named Jagun Rimes.
33:46 Scott He was a VP of engineering type that I worked with a few companies ago.
33:50 Scott um he lives in Florida and uh he taught we we Jagun and I hit it off and I'll tell you amongst the reasons he taught me about the C4 thing but here's why we hit it off here's here's how I knew I was had a developer crush on Jagun before I ever met him
34:07 Scott I get this resume comes across my we're looking to hire somebody I get this resume comes across my desk and on his resume it says all sorts of stuff but one of the things that said just one little bullet point in there was like he improved his team's estimation accuracy from x to y and I was like oh
34:26 Scott This is the only other person I've ever met in my entire career whose estimation accuracy is important and it's so important that he put it on his resume.
34:33 Scott I want to hire that guy.
34:35 Brad I love it.
34:36 Brad So how do you become a 10Xer? So one,
34:38 Brad like
34:39 Scott You learn the systems.
34:40 Brad learn the systems,
34:41 Brad right?
34:42 Brad What do we think about learned computer science fundamentals?
34:46 Brad And I don't necessarily mean that with a formal program,
34:49 Brad but like you can you can pick it up, you know.
34:52 Scott For sure, that's important.
34:53 Scott I would think learn good architecture and technical design fundamentals would be sort of more important because there's such abstraction now.
35:04 Scott So let's compare two scenarios.
35:06 Scott One person is using Ruby, like a very abstract language from how the computer works.
35:11 Scott And they really know nothing about how the computer works, but they can design really well.
35:14 Scott Right.
35:15 Scott The other person is using C,
35:17 Scott not even C++. They're using C.
35:18 Scott Right. So they understand how the computer works really, really well, but their design is terrible.
35:23 Scott Right.
35:23 Scott I think I'd rather have the first than the second.
35:26 Scott I think the first person
35:27 Brad I
35:27 Scott will get
35:27 Brad agree,
35:28 Scott but more we'll get more done.
35:30 Scott be more effective.
35:30 Brad Yeah,
35:31 Brad but the reason I the reason I say computer science fundamentals is I'm not I don't mean like go learn C,
35:35 Brad go learn a language.
35:36 Brad I don't mean that. I mean, like,
35:39 Brad you know, you got to understand what's going on underneath in the computer.
35:43 Brad Right.
35:44 Brad Like, how does memory work?
35:45 Brad How does how does the stack frame work versus RAM?
35:49 Brad Like.
35:50 Brad if you're like if you don't if you're not comfortable in a debugger and you don't understand that when you open up the debugger and you set a breakpoint and you're looking at a stack frame you know and what the difference between like you know stack frame you know uh scoped variables are versus memory that you've allocated as an object that's sitting in the heap like if you don't if that stuff's not fluid to you
36:12 Brad You've got to get those fundamentals or you're ever going to be a 10xer
36:15 Scott Hmm
36:15 Brad and and that doesn't matter what language you're using whether using Java JavaScript C C++ Ruby they're all the same that you need you need that you need to understand that stuff.
36:26 Scott Let's ask this you said something the debugger get
36:29 Brad Debugger every 10 extra I know uses a freaking debugger.
36:33 Scott did the kids use debuggers anymore?
36:35 Brad Some of them do.
36:35 Scott Some of them do I love
36:37 Brad The
36:37 Scott that
36:37 Brad 10
36:37 Scott I
36:37 Brad extras do.
36:38 Scott love the debugger
36:39 Brad Oh my God, I was just so excited. I just got my new, my new laptops.
36:43 Brad I've set up my new laptop and I was like setting up, you know, proper React native app building and,
36:49 Brad you know, ran the ran the Android simulator on this.
36:53 Brad on this new machine and the first thing that happened was I was like popped up and I was like able to set a break point in the debugger and I was just like I just had this moment of this just like washed with this warm glow of joy of seeing the debugger pop up and letting me set a break point
37:10 Scott I don't know how to program without the debugger.
37:12 Scott I mean, I do,
37:13 Scott but like to me, like it's like I can't.
37:17 Scott come you get to go inside you get to go inside the code you get to walk it's like john malcovich's head you get to go inside it
37:24 Brad Yeah, exactly.
37:25 Brad And, you know, again,
37:27 Brad like, you know, another another,
37:29 Brad you know, I just thought of another attribute of 10 extra that we didn't mention.
37:33 Brad They're never satisfied with something working,
37:37 Brad but they don't understand why it's working.
37:38 Scott yes yes
37:40 Brad They're never satisfied with a, you know.
37:43 Brad Works on my machine or could not repro.
37:48 Scott I will say there's two parts of that.
37:50 Scott One's a little bit of an Achilles heel.
37:51 Scott So one part of it goes back to what we were talking about,
37:55 Scott understanding the system,
37:56 Scott which is like when there's part of a system they don't understand,
37:59 Scott they'll just intuitively or not intuitively,
38:01 Scott but naturally take some time to go figure it out.
38:04 Scott I didn't really know what was happening over there.
38:06 Scott So I just spent the afternoon kind of trying to figure out what was going on over there. There's
38:11 Brad Did another. you tell us that story?
38:12 Brad Did you tell us that story a couple episodes ago about.
38:14 Brad about like the guy that was like debugging something he comes back and he's like how the how the hell did this even work at all you know i had to find out i had to get to the bottom of how this even worked at all
38:26 Scott He wrote a document that he shared around that how the F does such an, I can't remember what the system name was called,
38:32 Scott how the F does such and such work.
38:36 Scott That's right. Yeah,
38:37 Scott that's part of it. Now there's a little bit of an Achilles heel there.
38:41 Scott Sometimes, not all the time, sometimes a 10XR can head down that I want to understand it rabbit hole.
38:48 Scott But I would say less, when I say that out loud, I think to myself, but actually kind of less so than your sort of mid-junior engineer who gets lost there.
38:58 Scott Right.
38:59 Brad Yeah.
39:00 Brad And that's partly because I think the reason that the 10Xer goes down that rabbit hole but never gets lost down there is because that point that you made that they just are good at understanding the big picture of systems.
39:14 Brad And so they don't ever get stuck down like a maze because they're kind of always able to like pull their head up and look at the whole forest,
39:23 Scott Well,
39:23 Brad right?
39:24 Scott that actually you just brought something up.
39:25 Scott Something very interesting that an attribute I've seen is that they can zoom up and down really fluidly, right?
39:32 Scott They can be talking to you about business stuff in one sentence and the next second they're saying, but I think we should form the method like that. I think we should actually write it like this and you're just like,
39:42 Scott whoa,
39:43 Scott you have a whole thing in your head.
39:47 Scott You're
39:47 Brad Yep.
39:48 Scott in the debugger right now. You're in the matrix just like totally zooming around.
39:52 Brad Yep.
39:52 Scott Okay,
39:53 Scott so yeah, I think you learn the debugger, you learn how to understand a system,
39:57 Scott you learn fundamentals,
39:58 Scott you learn the...
39:59 Scott as a design look if you don't love it maybe you can't become a 10x or and that might be okay
40:05 Brad I think if you don't love if you don't if you're not in love with it,
40:08 Brad then I think it's going to be really, really hard because,
40:11 Brad you know, it's a lot like.
40:13 Brad like i like i'm i am confident lebron james loves basketball
40:17 Scott Yeah.
40:17 Brad loves it loves it loves it and that's why he is lebron james it's one of the many important things that makes him lebron
40:23 Scott Yeah,
40:24 Brad james yeah
40:24 Scott that's right.
40:25 Scott He loves it.
40:25 Brad yeah
40:27 Scott What else is there?
40:28 Scott You got to learn how to work with other people. I talked about independence,
40:32 Scott but you got to know how to work with other people.
40:34 Brad 100
40:34 Scott And I have a bias in this,
40:36 Scott which is I just think pair programming is the best way.
40:39 Brad I think that I agree with that.
40:41 Brad I agree with that.
40:42 Brad I think there's so much value that comes out of that.
40:45 Brad And I 100% agree that like all the 10Xers I know are they're great alone and they're also great together.
40:53 Brad And they're really great when they're paired with another 10Xer.
40:57 Brad That's when sparks fly in
40:59 Scott Yeah, it's probably true.
41:00 Brad a positive way.
41:01 Scott It's probably true.
41:02 Scott I want to get a room full of these people.
41:04 Brad Yeah,
41:04 Brad we they're.
41:05 Scott should have a 10th
41:05 Brad I mean, well,
41:06 Brad 10 that but
41:06 Scott conference
41:07 Brad that's that's
41:07 Scott they
41:07 Brad a nice point,
41:08 Brad right? The 10Xers, they attract each other.
41:10 Scott do for sure oh
41:12 Brad And I think 10Xers are attracted to problems that are interesting to solve.
41:17 Scott i just thought of another attribute of a 10xer
41:19 Brad Yeah,
41:20 Brad tell me.
41:21 Scott to some degree they're very independent minded and to some degree they march a little bit to their own drummer but i'm thinking of the pool of like as we've been having this conversation there's like six people in my head there's like a set of six people in my head that i'm like just continuously thinking about these people and they're all it's it's it's not it's it's not hard to get them to do things they don't want to do but it is a little bit of wrangling cats
41:45 Brad Yeah, that's fair.
41:47 Brad You're saying they're the first ones to have gotten those split keyboards,
41:52 Brad for example. Not all of them, but one of the 10Xers had the monitor turned to the side before anyone else did.
42:04 Brad A portrait monitor before anyone else did.
42:08 Scott You know what?
42:09 Scott of all of the 10xers I can think of, the group of six I'm thinking of, I don't think any of them had a split keyboard.
42:16 Scott But I do think that they all really knew their tools well.
42:22 Scott Whatever their editor or IDE was that they were using,
42:25 Scott they really knew it.
42:27 Scott And I'm thinking of this group now,
42:29 Scott like, you know, I know of a guy,
42:32 Scott what's a...
42:34 Scott IntelliJ?
42:36 Brad Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally.
42:37 Scott I'm not sure.
42:38 Brad Yeah,
42:38 Scott I think
42:38 Brad that's one of them.
42:39 Scott there was an IntelliJ guy,
42:40 Scott an Emacs guy,
42:41 Scott a Vim guy.
42:42 Scott They're all different.
42:43 Scott A VS Code guy.
42:44 Brad Yeah, the Vim masters,
42:46 Brad the 10xers that were in Vim.
42:48 Scott Well,
42:49 Scott they're playing above the rim.
42:51 Brad They're playing above the rim.
42:53 Scott But they all knew it. They all knew how to use their tools really well. They saw their tools as an advantage.
42:59 Scott Um,
42:59 Scott I
42:59 Brad Yeah.
43:00 Scott don't know about the keyboard part of it, but like they weren't they weren't doing the keyboard for show they were doing they're using their tools to make themselves more productive.
43:09 Brad Yeah.
43:09 Scott Maybe that's a question you ask when we have a room of 100 people we're trying to figure out who the 10Xer is. We talk to them about their tools.
43:16 Brad Well,
43:17 Brad by the way, that's one of the reasons why I feel like that question I've been asking a lot more lately in interviews about talk to me about generative AI.
43:24 Brad Right.
43:25 Brad Tell me tell me what you think about generative AI.
43:28 Brad And I am certain that the 10Xers are not religious about.
43:33 Brad gen x in a generation ai generated ai they're they're like they're like oh you know they immediately have a conversation about it and they see the places that it's a useful tool and they see the places that it has weaknesses and they're comfortable talking about that yeah
43:48 Scott Yeah.
43:50 Scott Yeah.
43:51 Scott Because, yeah, totally,
43:53 Scott totally, totally.
43:54 Scott Well,
43:55 Scott Brad,
43:55 Scott we can squeeze the 10X or rock forever.
43:58 Scott This has been a fun conversation.
44:01 Brad I feel like we've really got somewhere on this. Like this, this feels like it's fun to hear your interpretation of it. I can totally picture you in your mind's eye,
44:09 Brad like remembering all the 10 Xers you've worked with, you know, and like I was doing the same thing, you know, I had their faces kind of floating by in my mind and I was like, Oh yeah, let me think about how did, how did they behave?
44:19 Brad How did, what made them different?
44:20 Brad You know?
44:21 Brad And so it's kind of, it's one of those things that, you know, when you see it and it's amazing when you get to work with them.
44:27 Scott That's right.
44:27 Scott I'm sure that's how people feel about getting to play with LeBron.
44:30 Brad There you go.
44:31 Brad All right.
44:32 Scott Well, with that, we're out until next
44:33 Brad Well,
44:33 Scott week.
44:34 Brad what do we say?
44:35 Scott Smash rate and subscribe.
44:36 Scott Leave a review.
44:37 Scott Leave a great comment.
44:38 Brad Yeah.
44:39 Brad Leave 10X's comments.
44:40 Scott Love it.
44:41 Scott All right. Talk to you soon.
44:42 Brad This episode of How Many CTOs Does It Take podcast was edited by Safran Epigalb. Our theme song was AI generated by Brad.
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