What is the root cause of a 10x engineer? Are “10x Engineers” mythical creatures, or are they real but simply elusive. If elusive, how do we find them?
If you understand the root cause of a great engineer, it will help you find them and foster them. A key insight is their capacity for Learned Resilience, which ultimately boils down to who they are (more on hiring below). Once you understand the root cause, you can speak to it and lead by it. Don’t tell people what to do or how to do it. Help them understand why it should be done.
People in high growth and highly successful companies swear they have seen them. Having worked at various such companies, I absolutely believe they exist. As leaders, I believe one can find them, hire them, inspire them, and develop them. Similarly, one can also take the wind out of their sails if we’re not careful. One objective of this blog is to investiagte various avenues to inspire, develop and leverage such people. In my experience, in various startups including helping take a company from Pre-IPO to a $26B valuation, I witnessed multiple occurrences where 5 engineers outperformed 50. So, I’m a believer.
What is the Root Cause of the 10x Engineer?
There is talk about finding a 10x engineer, recognizing them and hiring them. There’s not much root cause analysis of what allows someone to become and remain a 10x engineer. What sets them apart and how did they become that way? Understanding that can help in developing and keeping them happy where they are. Once you have a unicorn, you certainly want to retain them. Also, it’s not really that someone is 10x “smarter” or “better.” They are 10x plus as impactful as others in how they apply their knowledge and abilities. They have the mindset and potential to have a 10x impact. If provided with the right environment, processes, and support to allow it to come to bear.
Hence, it helps to understand how to find, hire, inspire those potential 10X-ers that will thrive in a world changing at an accelerating pace. Hiring and inspiring people capable of Human Transformation is particularly relevant in the age of Digital Transformation.
Bill Gates, Reed Hastings and Marty Cagan on the 10x Engineer
“With a fixed amount of money for salaries and a project I needed to complete, I had a choice: Hire 10 to 25 average engineers, or hire one “rock-star” and pay significantly more than what I’d pay the others, if necessary.
“A great lathe operator commands several times the wages of an average lathe operator, but a great writer of software code is worth 10,000 times the price of an average software writer.” – Bill Gates
Reed Hastings discovered: “Over the years, I’ve come to see that the best programmer doesn’t add 10 times the value. He or she adds more like 100 times.”
“To be clear, there is most definitely such a thing as 10X employees. These are people that have demonstrated their ability to contribute on the order of 10X more than their peers. However, it’s also no secret that having a 10X employee does not necessarilytranslate into having 10X results.“
10x Engineer Mindsets
During my hiatus into teaching, I learned about Carol Dweck’s notion of learners possessing “fixed mindsets” or “growth mindsets.” Those with a fixed mindset believe we have an innate intelligence and set of skills. Whereas those with a growth mindset believe our intelligence and skills can be developed. If you’re endowed with certain intelligence and abilities, those more readily develop if you push beyond the challenges you meet. That are various differences between the two illustrated in the graphic below. What is key is understanding how to develop and foster the growth mindset.
Telling a child getting an A (or an engineer solving a tough problem) that they’re smart implies an innate intelligence. Remarking on the effort or approach creates a mindset encouraging taking on challenges and overcoming them. Saying someone hasn’t achieved something “yet” implies they can achieve it. People with growth mindsets thrive in uncertainty; they have a hunger for overcoming challenges and a high tolerance for risk, demonstrating a profound capacity for Learned Resilience. For them, failures are mere setbacks telling them they need to try a different approach. They welcome criticism as it helps them recognize they’re on the wrong path and allows them to course correct sooner. There is a wealth of information out there if you look for Carol Dweck and Growth Mindset…
The notion of metacognition is another trait common among those I have seen perform at 10x+ levels. Metacognition is the awareness and understanding of one’s own thought processes. It involves being conscious of the different facets of thinking. This include planning, monitoring, and evaluating one’s own understanding and performance. Metacognition enables individuals to reflect on how they learn, understand their strengths and weaknesses in learning. This enable them to adapt their strategies accordingly. It’s essentially “thinking about thinking” and is crucial for effective learning and problem-solving.
Metacognition and a growth mindset are closely aligned in several ways:
Self-Reflection: Both concepts emphasize the importance of self-reflection. Metacognition involves reflecting on one’s cognitive processes. A growth mindset requires reflection on one’s learning journey and attitudes towards challenges.
Adaptability and Flexibility: Metacognition enables individuals to assess and adapt their learning strategies. This aligns with the growth mindset’s emphasis on embracing challenges and persisting in the face of setbacks.
Openness to Learning: A growth mindset fosters a love of learning and a belief in the value of effort, which is complemented by metacognitive strategies that involve actively seeking out new ways to learn and improve.
Embracing Challenges: In a growth mindset, challenges are opportunities for growth. Metacognition supports this by helping individuals to strategize and plan their approach to overcoming obstacles.
Perseverance and Resilience: A growth mindset encourages perseverance, and metacognition aids this by allowing individuals to monitor their progress and adjust their efforts as needed to achieve their goals, thereby directly contributing to their Learned Resilience.
Feedback Utilization: Both concepts value feedback as a tool for improvement. Metacognition involves evaluating one’s performance and incorporating feedback, while a growth mindset sees feedback as an opportunity to learn and grow.
The presence of metacognition and a growth mindset are mutually reinforcing. Metacognition provides the tools and strategies for effective learning and problem-solving, while a growth mindset fosters the attitudes and beliefs that make the most of these strategies, encouraging a lifelong journey of learning and Learned Resilience.
The Contagious Impact of 10x Engineers
The idea of 10x engineers can be further supported when considering their indirect impact through the contagion of high performance. Their influence extends beyond their personal output to the environmental uplift they create for their teams, magnifying their overall contribution to an organization.
Proximity to high performers is infectious and lift productivity. Unfortunately, proximity to toxic employees decreases performance. Creating the right culture with the right people becomes a virtuous cycle. While studies never exactly match reality as every situation is unique, my experience, and that of others I’ve worked with, aligns with the premise.
Indirect Productivity (Positive Spillover):
Proximity to High Performers
Research on proximity to high performers shows they can influence productivity, work ethic, creativity, and collaboration habits of those around them. Research from the Kellogg School of Management found that employees seated within a 25-foot radius of a high-performing colleague experienced a 15% increase in performance. This “positive spillover” effect translated into significant financial gains for the company. See Kellogg: Sitting Near a High-Performer Can Make You Better at Your Job.
This ‘positive contagion’ amplifies team performance, creating an ecosystem where others improve their skills and output by learning from and aligning with the high performer, fostering collective Learned Resilience.
The underlying principle is that behaviors and attributes of those around us can influence our own, a concept rooted in social contagion theory. High performers’ work ethic and problem-solving skills can inspire and elevate the performance of nearby colleagues. See Equip These Generations: The Surprising Impact of Proximity: How Sitting Next to High Performers Can Boost Productivity
A study examining work relationships within organizations found a noteworthy connection between positive work relationships and enhanced employee job performance. Supportive interactions among colleagues contribute to improved task execution and overall productivity.See IJRPR: Impact of Work Relationship on Employees Job Performance. In my own experience, I have seen benefits of devising an interview process that assesses how, while outside their comfort zone, candidates collaborate with interviewers on solving problems that stretch the limits of their knowledge and past experiences.
Collaborative Problem-Solving in Interviews
Modern interview processes for software engineering roles often incorporate collaborative problem-solving assessments. These evaluations are designed to gauge a candidate’s ability to work effectively with others, adapt to new challenges, and apply innovative thinking. For instance, companies like Microsoft, Meta, Google, and Nvidia have structured their interviews to include problem-solving exercises that test both technical skills and collaborative abilities. See: Business Insider: Landing a job at Microsoft, Meta, Google or Nvidia is tough. Here’s what you need to know about the interview process.
Job Satisfaction: Research indicates that healthy workplace relationships are closely linked to employee job satisfaction. Positive interactions with coworkers and supervisors foster a supportive environment, leading to increased motivation and engagement. Organizations can benefit from implementing strategies that promote a culture of trust, open communication and teamwork. See Researchgate: Exploring the Impact of Workplace Relationships and Employee Job Satisfaction.
The Contagion of Toxic Workers and Low Performers (Negative Spillover)
Conversely, the same Kellogg study noted that proximity to toxic workers could decrease performance by up to 30%, highlighting the profound impact of workplace neighbors on individual productivity.
In 2015, The Harvard Business Review identified vision, values, practices guided by ethics, people, narrative, and place as the six important characteristics of successful corporate cultures. It’s very hard to build a good corporate culture, but one toxic person is enough to destroy it.
Knowledge Sharing and Mentorship
10x engineers often raise the collective knowledge of their teams by introducing better processes, tools, or methodologies.
Even if not explicitly mentoring, their presence models high standards and inspires others to emulate their approaches to work.
Positive Spillover in Virtual Proximity:
Increased Collaboration: Virtual collaboration tools like Slack, Microsoft Teams, and project management platforms can facilitate frequent interaction and knowledge sharing among team members, even when they’re geographically dispersed. This can create a sense of virtual “proximity” where team members feel connected and engaged.
Enhanced Communication: Regular video calls, instant messaging, and collaborative document editing can foster a sense of shared purpose and encourage the exchange of ideas, mimicking the spontaneous interactions that occur in a physical office.
Mentorship and Learning: Virtual mentorship programs, online communities of practice, and peer-to-peer learning platforms can help replicate the knowledge transfer and skill development that happen organically through physical proximity.
Negative Spillover in Virtual Proximity:
Toxicity in Virtual Spaces: Negative behaviors like cyberbullying, passive-aggressive communication, and disengagement can spread just as easily in virtual environments, potentially impacting team morale and productivity.
Reduced Communication and Isolation: Limited face-to-face interaction and reliance on text-based communication can sometimes lead to misunderstandings, misinterpretations, and feelings of isolation, hindering collaboration and knowledge sharing.
Digital Overload: Constant notifications, emails, and virtual meetings can create a sense of digital overload, leading to stress, burnout, and reduced productivity, even when working alongside high-performing colleagues.
Cultural Impact
High performers often drive a culture of excellence and innovation. When teams observe the impact of a 10x engineer, they are more likely to adopt behaviors that contribute to a high-performance environment.
Leadership can also have a significant impact on how culture helps amplify the contagion of high performers. Creating a culture where everyone adheres to API (Assuming Positive Intent) fosters collaboration rather than competition and resentment. Furthermore, leaders can help frame design, code and document reviews as gifts to help lift everyone’s performance. If the intent of reviews is conveyed as being to catch and correct errors, you’re missing an opportunity. The true value of finding any error lies in the opportunity to learn. If reviewers suggest a better way to do something, they help incrementally. If they further, kindly convey their perspective as to why that approach is better, they do much more than just address that one instance.
Multiplicative Effects in Hybrid and Remote Work
While physical proximity plays a role in the positive contagion of productivity, the concept extends to remote work when virtual collaboration is intentional:
Code and design reviews, discussions in Slack channels, and participation in meetings allow the practices of a 10x engineer to spread. This is further enhanced when the high performers recognize the value of providing review feedback, when given as a gift, lifts those around them. It is even further enhanced when those receiving feedback also receive it as a gift to improve their craft.
Tools like pair programming can also amplify their influence by offering direct mentorship opportunities.
To foster a high-performance culture in remote settings, companies have implemented strategies such as regular virtual check-ins, collaborative tools, and periodic in-person gatherings. For instance, Affirm, a remote-first company, organizes quarterly in-person meetings to reinforce company values and collaboration. See Business Insider: Affirm’s COO shares one approach the remote-first company uses to build a ‘high-performance culture’
Additionally, a study by Stanford economist Nicholas Bloom found that hybrid work models, where employees work from home part of the week, can maintain productivity levels comparable to full-time office work. The study also noted that hybrid work arrangements led to a 33% reduction in employee resignations, suggesting that such models can support sustained performance and employee retention. See Stanford News: Study finds hybrid work benefits companies and employees.
10x Companies and 10x Leaders
In his book, Great by Choice, Jim Collins also refers to 10x companies and 10x leaders:
“We labeled our high-performing study cases with the moniker “10X” because they didn’t merely get by or just become successful. They truly thrived. Every 10X case beat its industry index by at least 10 times.” … “We labeled our high-performing study cases with the moniker “10X” because they didn’t merely get by or just become successful. They truly thrived. Every 10X case beat its industry index by at least 10 times.” … “On the one hand, 10X-ers understand that they face continuous uncertainty and that they cannot control, and cannot accurately predict, significant aspects of the world around them. On the other hand, they reject the idea that forces outside their control or chance events will determine their results; they accept full responsibility for their own fate.“
In his case studies, it is clear that 10x leaders are not only very conscious of how they choose their teams, but it also become how they role model for and inspire they teams to greatness to outperform other teams by 10x or more.
10x Engineer Risk Tolerance
While studying cultural diversity, I recognized that only a very small minority were born in Silicon Valley, and a disproportionate number come from other countries. They have grit. The founding fathers left behind the safety and known world in Europe. They risked crossing the ocean into an unknown environment. They came willing to take risks and overcome challenges to attain something they didn’t have before, inherently cultivating Learned Resilience. Often the immigrant leaves behind their home, family, friends and culture. They’re eager to conquer challenges in an unknown world to attain something more at the cost of what leave behind. This could also be a high-school graduate from Arkansas or West Virginia… These are entrepreneurs and pioneers arriving at new ideas and approaches, breaking new ground and creating great companies.
People with a high risk tolerance aren’t afraid of change. In fact, they often seek it out as a life without challenge would seem dull to them. They are drawn to a life composed of a series of paradigm shifts that evoke and require continuous human transformation These thrill-seekers may be ideally suited to thrive in the Age of Digital Transformation.
Risk tolerance in those that risked their lives to escape oppression
In Munich, we loved hiring engineers from East Germany. They were consistently very eager to succeed in a new and unknown world. Many had often undergone great risk and left behind family and friends to find something better for themselves. After the wall came down, the desire to hire people from the East faded. Many from the East no longer had to risk much to get there. They often weren’t used to jobs rewarding engagement and risk taking. The Berlin Wall had been a barrier to those faint of heart, much like the ocean to the pioneers. Once gone, coming from East Germany was no longer a valid differentiator to find ambitious risk takers, or those who had already cultivated Learned Resilience through significant personal risk.
10x Engineer Hiring Rituals
Don’t hire people for what they know. Hire them for why they know it. Don’t hire people for what they are able to do. Hire them for why they are able to do it.
Hiring 10x-ers, it’s key to recognize what sets them apart. The hiring ritual starts by training the interviewers. Training them involves having well defined questions but also, perhaps more importantly, on how to ask them. The objective of an interview in the interview should NOT be to make a hire/no-hire decision. It’s widely accepted that people will use their intuition to make that decision in the first minute or two of an interview. The role of an interviewer should understand how they solve and answer the questions asked. It shouldn’t be about whether they answered them correctly. They should know that the question of hire/no-hire will be discussed in the debrief once every interviewers’ experience has been heard.
Delaying the decision allows for something known as “delayed intuition” or “informed intuition.” Delaying the decision has been shown in studies to result in a much higher correlation to whether it turns out to be a good hire later on. See Delayed Intuition as discussed by Adam Grant and Daniel Kahneman which Kahneman (author of Thinking Fast and Slow) discusses more deeply in his great book Noise.
Consider Scoring Traits
Later, in the interview with Kahneman, he speaks of breaking up and interviewing into scoring on 6 traits. He suggested asking factual questions about each trait, and then scoring on the trait (e.g. work ethic, analytical ability or integrity). Interviewers at first, didn’t like this rigor until he reintroduced the notion of intuition at the end (after giving ratings and hearing others’ assessments of ratings). The intuition at the end after doing the ratings and listening to rating and then using interviewers’ intuition was the best predictor of future performance.
Leave the Comfort Zone
Take the candidate outside their comfort zone with structured questions. This allows various avenues and depths for the interviewer to go. You learn a great deal more than if you probe them for what knowledge they have. Candidates taken down a path beyond their existing knowledge need to collaborate with the interviewer. They need to first understand the problem and then explore possible solutions.
Do they ask enough questions to understand the problem? If you offer a suggestion, do they jump on it without considering its merits? If you ask them if they’re certain about a solution or path they’ve taken is finding one, do the stubbornly insist and continue? Basically, are they open to the possibility that they might be wrong and willing to explore other approaches?
People with fixed mindsets quickly stall or give up when you take them down this path. People with a growth mindset will derive energy from a new challenge. They’re able to grasp specifics of problems they’ve never seen before with a willingness to be vulnerable in potentially failing as they explore possible solutions. The final question is if they are drained because they weren’t able to come up with solutions based purely on their prior knowledge? Or, are they energized by collaborating and exploring solutions. To get ahead, you need to solve problems others haven’t solved and/or to solve them in ways others haven’t solved them before. Hence, hire those eager to explore the unknown and learn and discover than to hire someone who knows existing answers to existing problems.
Who the Candidates are as People
Consider again that it’s not about what they know but rather why they know it. Similarly, it’s not what they are capable of doing, but why they are capable of doing it. What they know and are able to do are proxies for their motivation to gain knowledge and get things done. So, ultimately, it’s about who they are. As such, it’s important that the very first company contact from a sourcer followed by the recruiter that should convey company culture if you want to attract the right candidates. The whole experience through to the close should be a consistent experience. I like to close out an interview with the following question.
“If you look back on your life (ideally your life outside of work), can you find one moment, one experience, one event that you’re willing to share that changed who you are and how you see and approach the world?” One reason to leave this question to the end is that it helps to have build up the trust and connection that you genuinely care who they are as a person. I’ve gotten some of the most amazing responses to this question. People have said they’ve never share what they were telling me with anyone else. They often share a tail that makes it clear that they have found a strong purpose in their life and a drive towards achieving something and having an impact.
Importance of a Deep Sub-Story in an Interview
According to Robin Dunbar, emotional connections are essential for maintaining strong social bonds. In the context of an interview, weaving a deep sub-story can significantly enhance the connection between the interviewer and the interviewee. This narrative layer goes beyond superficial facts and taps into emotions, personal experiences, and values. It can foster a sense of understanding and empathy, crucial for building trust and rapport. The interview becomes not just an exchange of information but an opportunity to connect on a human level, which is critical in contexts like job interviews, therapy sessions, or journalistic inquiries.
In my experience, if you’re able to make such a strong connection in the first interview, it can make for an amazing connection and working relationship. On the other hand, if you can’t, you may discover something will always feel like it’s missing from that relationship. Understanding the sub-story is what allow you to go beyond understanding what the candidate knows. It gets into understanding why they know it.
Robin Dunbar, is an anthropologist and evolutionary psychologist. He’s best known for Dunbar’s number, which posits that humans can maintain only a limited number of stable social relationships—about 150. His theories provide valuable insights into human connections in various contexts, including interviews, team dynamics, and organizational structures. See also his latest book “The Social Brain: The Psychology of Successful Groups“
Other Perspectives on Hiring 10x-ers
Dan Slate, from Wealthfront asks: “What’s the most important thing you’ve learned from a peer and how have you used that lesson in your day-to-day life?” It shows a willingness to learn from others (rather than be threatened by them).
Jeff Boss determines a growth mindset during the interview; it seems his questions could also be done by a coached recruiter during a phone screen: 5 Questions That Identify Growth-Minded Employees.
Jonathan Fulton former SVP Product & Engineering at Storyblocks suggests a process we also used at IMVU in 7 Steps to Hiring 10x Engineers, , . In the post-interview huddle, we required a champion for a candidate and allowed anyone to veto. I’d also go around the room asking each interviewer how they would feel if they would be the new-hire’s spin-up buddy. Engineers tend to be analytical in assessing others, but this question to accessed their intuition. Great hires were consistently ones people would want to buddy with.
I don’t entirely agree with Fulton’s closing statement that he pulled from Steve Jobs: “You know what’s interesting, you know who the best managers are? They’re the great individual contributors who never, ever want to be a manager but decide they have to be a manager because no one else is going to be able to do as good a job as them.” In my experience, the best managers are often started as the best engineers. Great managers also benefit from a 10x Mindset; however, great managers, like any 10x-er, love what they do no matter what it is. I have yet to meet a great manager that hates their job.
Further on Hiring, See Also:
Interview Questions – from recognized experts can help inform what you will choose for your company
Speed Dating Questions – these can be helpful when you’re interviewing an Engineering VP or CTO to structure the interview and keep them on track
New Hires – Don’t stop at hiring, institute a good spin-up / mentoring experience for the new hire.
“The top tier of developers are far more than 10x more valuable than the average developer. Not because they produce 10x more lines of code, or “crush” 10x as many bugs or sprint points, but because they build. better. systems. Period.“
One common scenario that Seibel suggests involving such “keystone” developers:
“There’s a tiny team or a startup working on an ambitious product. Despite their limited resources they produce something of significant value and quality, something that normally would require a much vaster number of average developers working for much longer to achieve a similar result. This leads to runaway success.“
Helping the Newly Hired 10x Engineer Become Effective
One of the biggest mistakes I’ve seen in both startups and large organizations is not having a thorough and thoughtful process on how to spin up new hires. Having dealt with this in the past, I put a great deal of thought into this while at IMVU/The Lean Startup. I’ve carried forward the process of effectively spinning up new hires to several other orgs.
Hiring for a Growth Mindset
Carol Dweck speaks to hiring for the Growth Mindset as part of her talk The Growth Mindset at Google.
In my experience, a key contributing factor contributing to what makes a 10x individual may well be a 10x manager, teacher, coach or parent…
Here is my take on The Five Why’s Behind a Growth Mindset:
Why can one 10x engineer be so much more productive than another? Because they approach problems differently.
Why does a 10x engineer approach problems so differently? Because they have a fundamentally different Mindset.
Why is it that they have a different Mindset? Because they come from an environment that fosters a different perspective and experienced the rewards that this mindset brings.
Why is this environment so different leading to such a different outcome? Because they have been influenced by parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, teachers, mentors, role models, coaches, peers, and/or managers. People that help them recognize the values of not fearing failure, embracing challenges, and seeking to understand the unknown. Those that support their willingness to take risks, be inspired by others, persist in the face of setbacks, be open-minded to trying novel approaches. Supporters that help them learn from criticism, find lessons and inspiration from the successes of others.Ultimately it helps that they experience that this has helped them overcome challenges they may have previously seen as insurmountable.
Why are these influencers so different from other people? Because they understand what has helped them succeed and are willing and able to invest in sharing these insights with others.
There’s no “I” in Team, but there is an “M E”
Another important characteristic of a 10x engineer is their ability to not lose what makes them unique and special while also finding a way to be a team player. As leaders, we need to be careful to not over-solve for team harmony by squelching the individual. It’s a delicate but important balance to celebrate everyone as the amazing individual they are while allowing that to happen within a positive team that is willing to challenge each other from a place of trust. As Shaq related at the Celebration of Life, Kobe pointed out the is a M E in Team when told there is no “I”. Kobe learned to find the balance of remaining an amazing player all by himself while also being a great team player. He found the potential to not lose the “me” in team without making just about the “I” in him.
The Importance of the Why
Whether hiring people for why they know something or understanding why they come to work, it is critical to understand and feed motivation.
Our Own Why
Understanding our team’s and peer’s why must start with understanding your own why. If you don’t understand what you want out of life and what inspires you, it will be hard to understand how what you do and how you do it at work feeds you with energy and what drains you. I recall at an anniversary celebration of an Intuit exec, someone asked them what had been the favorite job in their career. It struck me that he hesitated to answer. It also came to me that I was surprised the answer wasn’t this job right now.
Upon reflection, I realized that I believe we are continuously learning on our journey what makes us tick. It seems along the way, as we learn, we are also in increasingly better position to choose the job that best aligns with our why. We also learn that how we choose to do things can also resonate with our why or create dissonance. If we aren’t grounded and motivated in our own why, it will be hard to inspire others.
The Why of Prosper Marketplace
One day at Prosper, I decided I should go around and start asking people while they were getting coffee in the kitchen, why they came to work at Prosper every day. I was pleased that everyone took the question seriously. After a pause, I believe every single person said it was because of all the great people they get to work with. Credit to David Kimball for setting up and maintaining such a culture. However, I wasn’t satisfied with that answer. I suggested you can find kind people at other companies; so, why Prosper? After further thought, the typical answer came back with some surprise as folks had let the why they joined slip into the background. The consistent answer was watching “My Prosper Story” videos.
Prosper had had a campaign to have people that had benefited from loans that we had facilitated record videos about their Prosper Story. These were heartfelt stories told from the people and families that had benefited from Prosper. They talked about having lost hope of ever getting out of credit card debt until Prosper facilitated a way out. They talked about paying for a child’s education they couldn’t have otherwise afforded. There were stories of adding a room for the baby on the way or the elderly parent that needed to move it. Medical bills that seemed like they might lead to foreclosure on their family home had become manageable. These stories inspired prospective and current employees as they aligned with their whys of not only wanting to have a job but to have one that brought good into the world.
Why Prosper Survived the Pandemic
One year before Covid hit, our risk manager, Julie Marpert Januik, decided we should emulate a global pandemic to see if and how we could sustain it. So, when it hit, it wasn’t a “Black Swan” event for us. We knew our customers would struggle to pay off loans leading to investors to withdraw. So, we knew we needed to cut costs significantly and fast. The thought was to start by cutting 20% of the work-force right away. It took some convincing, but we cut pay by 20% instead. Without a strong why, this could have killed morale and productivity.
There were other factors that lead to the turn-around, but the desire to do good and help people from defaulting on their loans was inspirational. At the end of the year where we cut everyone’s salary and feared seeing the end of the business, more than 99% of the people that said they’d default on their loans didn’t. This due to quick changes that allowed them to reduce or pause payments. The end of year company morale survey, that had shown consistent results for 15 years, took a double-digit jump upwards. In the executive team, there was consensus that what we’d feared would be Prosper’s worst year became the most productive and impactful year ever.
The “Why” at Twitch
I joined Twitch as EVP, Engineering after going through. four-month interview process with the CEO Emmet Shear. It was the best and most thorough interview process I’ve ever been through. Coming from IMVU, I could relate to a why behind allowing people to achieve things in a virtual world that seemed unimaginable for them in the real world. IMVU allowed you to dress as you wanted and go where you wanted in a virtual world without anyone else needing to know or judge you. I discovered the most new users we were getting at the time were women for Saudi Arabia and other cultures that were repressive.
Twitch allowed gamers to achieve things in eSports that seemed unimaginable to most in “real” sports. Both served as confidence boosters that often impacted real word experiences.One of Twitch’s biggest challenges at the time was hiring qualified and inspired engineers. It was a niche product and tiny company that didn’t seem to align with the why of engineering candidates. Recognizing that many engineers were also gamers, I decided we should advertise within Twitch ~”Are you and engineer? Want to work for Twitch?” We received so many applications that we needed help to process them all. However, this lead to hiring some amazing engineers whose personal passions and why’s aligned very well with what we did at Twitch.
In one year, while also going through deep and thorough due-diligence examinations, we tripled the size of engineering. Of course, that can also kill a company if you don’t have a robust on-boarding process for new hires. Twitch, now owned by Amazon, is valued at $45 Billion.
The Why that Keeps Hum Capital Humming
At Hum Capital, we pull in live company financial data to match against investors’ criteria in order to allow investment decision based on merit. This notion of enabling companies and employees at those companies to succeed through good financing is a key reason why Hum employees are inspired to make a difference. A difference in a world where most investment decisions seem to be made in California or New York to white, male CEOs that are well connected in the venture and funding community. There is a strong alignment of the why at Hum. This Why comes througb strongly in the founders Blair Silverberg, Chris Olivares and Csaba Konkoly.
Within engineering, we also strive to hire engineers that are inspired to become masters in their craft. I strove to build a culture where design and code reviews were not delivered and received as criticism but rather as gifts in service of improving our craft. That shift in mindset removes negativity and defensiveness.
In one-on-ones and performance reviews, management also strives to understand and support the whys of team members so as to provide opportunities for people to grow in the direction they wish to go.
The Why and the 100x Leader
It may seem hard to believe that 10x engineers exist (a point I aim to dispel in this document). It may seem even harder to grasp that 100x leaders exist. However, if we envision leaders that know how to hire and inspire 10x engineers, a leader of 10 such engineers may be able to achieve a 100x impact over a leader that doesn’t hire and inspire that way. And yet, we again and again see tiny startups disrupt one space or another in a way that much larger, established and experienced institutions are not able to do.
The Why and Weathering Storms
In a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world, companies will struggle. Many are needing to cut costs, change course, apply new approaches, find ways to leverage AI and survive the storms. Having weathered many storms at many companies and coming to recognize that weathering such storms may actually be a necessary ingredient, a rite of passage to help a company bond and align on the why of the team and the why of the company.
Other Correlations Between Why and Success
“Drive” by Daniel H. Pink – Pink’s book explores how autonomy, mastery, and purpose are key motivators for employees. By aligning these intrinsic motivators with company goals, leaders can significantly enhance engagement and productivity.
“Start with Why” by Simon Sinek – Sinek discusses the importance of understanding and communicating the ‘why’ behind a company’s actions, which can inspire employees to align their personal goals with the company’s larger mission.
“Find Your Why” by Simon Sinek – We are all entitled to wake up in the morning inspired to go to work, feel safe when we’re there, and return home fulfilled at the end of the day. In this book, Sinek suggests achieving that fulfillment starts with understanding exactly WHY we do what we do.
“Leaders Eat Last” by Simon Sinek – This book further explores how leaders can create an environment where employees feel protected and valued, making it easier for them to buy into and strive towards the company’s vision.
Articles and Studies:
Betterworks: “How to Connect Employees with Your Company’s Mission” – This article provides insights into aligning employee efforts with company goals through effective mission, vision, and values communication.
ExtensisHR: “One Business, One Mission: How to Align Employees with Company Goals” discusses the critical role of having a well-defined mission, vision, and values in a business. It outlines best practices for aligning employees with these company-wide goals to ensure everyone is working towards the same objectives, thus enhancing organizational efficiency and employee engagement.
The article specifically points out that a clear understanding of these elements helps employees see how their daily work contributes to the company’s larger objectives, which in turn can enhance their engagement and productivity. For more detailed strategies and insights, I recommend checking the ExtensisHR website directly or searching for articles related to aligning employee goals with company objectives on their platform.
Happiness and the 10x Engineer
When I interview manager or director candidates, I ask them how they would differentiate an engineer they cannot find a way to help succeed and one they would love to clone. Some say they are smart or hard-working or highly skilled. If those are the answers, I like to ask: What do you think makes them that way? What is the root cause behind someone having all these qualities? More experience/insightful managers will offer passionate or motivated. Ultimately, people that love what they’re doing are more likely to work hard, learn, be engaged become skilled, … They have or develop a Growth Mindset or they are simply happy at whatever they do.
In my experience, the 10x engineer loves what they do more so than insisting they get to do what they love. They consistently enjoy finding generic, robust, simple solutions to complex problems.
I listened to a Udemy course on management where an experienced manager stated “I’ve never seen anyone get fired that was happy in their job.” Comparatively, you may discover that resonates with your experience. The conclusion being that people that love their jobs will succeed and will be valued. I found some related research below.
Planting the seeds for 10x Engineers
As teachers, coaches, managers, parents, adults, humans, … we find ourselves in a unique position. We may plant a sense of confidence, potential, almost invincibility and sense of worthiness in those looking up to us. We can help them appreciate that within them lies the ability to unlock potential they previously didn’t realize they possessed.
Studies have shown that employees, especially highly desirable engineers may join a company, but they leave a manager. The number one reason for leaving a job is the manager.
Google researched what makes the most effective and desirable managers that develop and retain the most effective engineers. They came up with:
Michelle Donovan speaks to How Google Makes 10x Managers
Eight Habits of a Highly Effective Google Manager: 1. Be a good coach 2. Empower your team and don’t micro-manage 3. Express interest in employees’ success and well-being 4. Be productive and results-oriented 5. Be a good communicator and listen to your team 6. Help your employees with career development 7. Have a clear vision and strategy for the team 8. Have key technical skills, so you can help advise the team.
Developing the 10x Engineer
Talent Code is a book where Daniel Coyle describes deep learning through short repetitions and feedback loops. His examples include repeated sources of top athletes and musicians. I have applied this approach in coaching sports and in business. As leaders, understanding how to apply the talent code can help us enable 10x talent to develop more quickly than through brute-force hard work.
Josh Waitzkin won his first National Chess Championship at age nine; later he became World Champion of Tai Chi Chuan. In The Art of Learning, Josh insists he wasn’t a prodigy and that we can all achieve these levels of accomplishment with the right approach.
“The moment we believe that success is determined by an ingrained level of ability, we will be brittle in the face of adversity.”- Josh Waitzkin
Are You Missing the Point?
If you read this hoping to learn how to get the most out of your employees, then you’re missing the point. When that’s your motivation, you’ll discover it’s hard to motivate those you lead. If you’re hoping to create the best environment for them to flourish, you may find yourself in a virtuous cycle.
How do I get the most out of my people vs How do I help my people work at their natural best?
How do I get somebody to do something? I hear this all the time? I get this question, How do I get the most out of my people? How do I get the best out my people?
They’re not a towel. You don’t wring them. You don’t see how much you can get out of them.
How do I help my people work at their natural best? That’s the right question, and it profoundly changes the answers you’ll come up simply by changing the question.
So, you might be coming up with all the right answers to all the wrong questions. That’s the problem. How do I get the best out of my people? Well, you can whip them; that’s works. It works really well. Try it. It does; it does. Try it. But, it’s not sustainable. Teachers will become demoralized, they’ll quit. Or, they’ll just become bad teachers.
Sam Gerstenzang of Andreesen Horowitz writes about The Happy Demise of the 10X Engineer. He refers to how Software eats software development suggesting 10x engineers are no longer needed given ever increasing enabling technology. While this holds for many non-deep-tech endeavors, it also actually underscores that the engineers that the engineers building all that infrastructure may be 1,000x engineers as their work hugely multiplies the work of others.
Gerstenzang’s Premise
“As the leverage of the individual software engineer increases, the barriers to becoming a code creator are falling fast. The same software foundation (open source software, development tools like Github, infrastructure as a service provided by the likes of Digital Ocean, and more) that allowed Whatsapp and Imgur to scale, means that experience and skill writing software become less important.”
“A disproportionately high number of billion dollar companies are deep-tech“
It might seem we only need a few of these in the industry, and we don’t need them in our company. However, for “deep-tech” companies, they are valuable within the company. In his book Super Founders What Data Reveals About Billion-Dollar Startups, Ali Tamaseb speaks of Level of Engineering at various Unicorn Tech.
“The level of engineering/scientific innovation and work varies and we can find all types, from pure system integration (where the value-add is mostly in business model) to hard-tech companies where the main value is a new technology that was not available before. Based on the overall number of deep-tech companies that get founded every year (not that many), a disproportionately high number of billion dollar companies are deep-tech.”
So, my counter to Gerstenzang’s points is that for for more technical companies, the 10x engineer still has an opportunity and place for impact. Furthermore, the engineers building generically available enabling technology may be 100x++ engineers. Likewise, for Applications Engineering that can run based on AI-generated code from programs like CoPilot writing prompts, there is a need for the engineers that build, maintain and extend programs like CoPilot.
How a 10x-er Approaches the Job from Hell
I was presented this question in an Organizational Psychology course and was surprised how few leaders appreciated why a good employee would excel in what they believed to be the job from hell:
If you took your least productive employee and asked them to describe their dream job, and you took your most product employee and asked them to describe the job from hell. If you then created both jobs and put the least productive employee into their dream job and the most productive employee in the job from hell, after two months in those jobs, who do you think would be more productive?
Akin to the Navy Seal exercise, it’s not about the challenge, but how someone chooses to approach it.
For the 10x-er, I’d expect them to define a very mundane job that isn’t challenging and possibly repetitive. Once put into that job, a 10x-ers will typically find a way to systematize or automate the task to make it happen more quickly with less effort to free time up for more challenging work. Doing this, rather than just doing the job is at the core of what makes a 10x-er a 10x-er. The automated/systematized task will often be completely 10x as fast as when done manually.
Similarly, consider that It’s very rare for someone who loved their job to be let go (Exceptions: Layoffs that are true Reductions in Force). The corollary is: It’s very rare for someone who hated their job to be promoted.
Does the 1/10th Engineer Exist?
Another way to look at whether 10x engineers exist is to consider if there are 1/10th engineers. Engineers that are one tenth as productive as others we’ve seen. I would argue this too is not only a real possibility, but I’ve discovered these as well. Often if you have a team or single engineer that is operating without motivation, with an extremely high interrupt level, within a poor environment or in code heavily laden with tech debt, or mismanaged, and/or constantly being asked to start something new before the previous work was completed, … Then it is easy to imagine them performing at 1/10th or even less of their potential, capacity or ability.
I believe for many of us, the 1/10th engineer is easier to imagine than a 10x engineer, and yet it all boils down to the same basics. If we do the inverse of filling our engineers’ sails with winds then we can take all the wind out of their sails. When we do that, we shouldn’t be surprised when that ship appears motionlessly adrift.
If, as leaders, we look for the root cause of a 1/10 engineer, we may well find ourselves looking into the mirror.
A boat crew analogy of how, as leaders, we can create 1/10 engineers or 10x engineers – Jocko Willink and Leif Babin explain how leadership can directly effect the success of a team.
The above analogy from Jocko Willink and Leif Babin comes from their first book Extreme Ownership. Afterwards, they realized there were subtle yet critical nuances they had left out of that book which actually created poor leadership practices. So, they decided to write second book to speak to some of these critically important nuances: The Dichotomy of Leadership. If you’ve only read that book, you missed the boat.
10x Leaders at Startups
Startups can come with challenges to leadership that will test resilience and perseverance. Of all that startups I’ve been at, I believe everyone has been dangerously close to the point of complete failure at least once. Weathering Storms simply comes with working at a startup. There are many similar stories told about famous companies by famous entrepreneurs:
Not being oblivious to the dangers (a la Only the Paranoid Survive) while not being overcome by the challenges can require an even keel to sail the ship through various storms. In these situations, “Fear is healthy and panic is deadly.” Apprehension and mitigation plans can be good, but anxiety and either indecision or hasty decisions can sink the ship. Being able to maintain that balance not only within yourself but also within you peers, your investors and your team requires a high degree of emotional intelligence and grit. That’s what it takes to keep playing The Infinite Game. The fastest ship may ot win the race; it may simply be the one that survives the storms.
10x Founders
Ali speaks of “Super Founders” as he dives into understand what contributes to a founder having a larger outcome / exit which he sets at the $1B level. He collected over 30,000 data points from non-unicorn startups and then interviewed founders of 15 billion dollar startups including Zoom, Nest, GitHub, Cloudflare, PayPal, Affirm, Brex, Kite Pharma, Instacart, as well as VCs like Peter Thiel, Elad Gil, and Alfred Lin (Sequoia Capital), Keith Rabois (Founders Fund).
In so doing, he debunked come myths around these 10x founders but also found some interesting commonalities. To learn more, check out:
Some of his findings correlate to what I’ve seen with non-founding 10x leaders and engineers.
CD
Quotes
A 10X-er is “that rare person with outsized skills, an abnormally positive attitude, and lots of vision, balanced with enough humility to pivot when great advice comes along. When great advice doesn’t come organically, the 10x-er solicits it, knowing where and how to look for feedback that will help most. Deep curiosity and enthusiasm are always part of the 10x-er’s game-changing makeup. 10x-ers often work harder and smarter than everyone else in the room. From their perspective, inefficiency is just a bug they’d love to squash. They see a world filled with opportunities and can move on to the next available own when things don’t go their way. They are fundamentally reasonable and willing to accept responsibility for their role in outcomes. In essence, the 10x-er alone has the raw materials to go from very good to great to excellent to sublime and beyond.”
Further they call out differences in leaders as follows:
“We like to think of our champions and idols as superheroes who were born different from us. We don’t like to think of them as relatively ordinary people who made themselves extraordinary.”
Metacognition by John Dunlosky, Janet Metcalfe is the first textbook to focus on people′s extraordinary ability to evaluate and control their cognitive processes. This comprehensive text covers both theoretical and empirical metacognitive research in educational, developmental, cognitive and applied psychology.
Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning by Peter C. Brown, Henry L. Roediger III, and Mark A. McDaniel: This influential book examines the factors that contribute to effective learning, emphasizing the role of metacognition in enhancing memory and retention.
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman: This groundbreaking work delves into the two modes of thinking, System 1 and System 2, and explores how understanding metacognition can help us make better decisions.
Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise by Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool: This fascinating book investigates the factors that lead to exceptional performance in various domains, highlighting the importance of deliberate practice and metacognitive strategies.
2016 HBR article on noise Kahneman et al introduce the idea of a noise audit, and the idea of a reasoned rule.
How To Reduce Decision Noise discusses: Noise Audits, Reasoned Rules, Aggregate Judgments Use Algorithms, But Make Them Tolerable, The Mediating Assessments Protocol
8 thoughts on “10x Engineer Root Cause”