I'm working with a team of software and devops engineers, and the team has recently been shuffled due to layoffs. Our technical lead, "Alice" (not her real name, of course), who works a lot of overtime and helps over 10 teams in our department, was recently screwed over by some exec, who basicall...
Seems that you found out quite clearly that the "10x" engineer is, indeed, a thing. And there are very few options on "patching up" the situation. Further, since you will likely take the blame for falloff in productivity, particularly once Alice leaves, you may well need a contingency plan as well.
@JonCuster Yeah, but, apples to oranges, right? 20 juniors versus 1 principal. Is it possible Alice just made her work too complex for others to learn? Apparently it requires the use of 4 programming languages and 5 "tech stacks". Seems excessive.
How long has the project been going? How many changes/upgrades/new features have been made over that time? How much funding was ever available to rewrite the whole thing to get it down to one programming language and one tech stack? Your Alice knows all the technical debt and where the bodies are buried in the code, your juniors have no clue. Asking the juniors to rewrite will likely result in a complete mess without guidance from Alice. Good luck.
And each of those tools has a good use case I suspect. So, as the engineering manager what single tool would you use for the project? And what single tech stack?
@JonCuster OK fine. maybe all 4 tools are needed. But why does each and every team member supposedly need to know all 4 at the same time, or be experts in all 4 at the same time? Seems reasonable to split the 4 languages across 4 groups.
The 10x (or more) engineer is a thing because knowledge work is different from manual work. For manual work, one strong individual may be able to carry three times the weight that normal workers can carry. Big deal. In knowledge work, not knowing how to do it means you can't do a third of what a knowledgeable person does, but zero percent (or just a little more after weeks of training). The reciprocal of (zero percent + epsilon) is a huge number - that's how much your engineer is "better"...
I feel it is too early to compare performance. Those new developers did not have the time to ramp up and show their real value. Whoever arrive on a large project take months for ramping up. I propose to give them more time.
The technology stack have exploded in the last decade. There is front-end, back-end, devop, database, bi, ai, etc. that use all their own technologies. What you described seems to be devops + back-end, 4 technologies to cover those areas seems fair.
I work multiple years as a software developer for different consultant companies. My experience was bad for customer that hire multiple developers at the same time. It means a lot of onboarding, chaos and divided support from the customers. Often, the developers felt bad there is no progress and quit, creating a turn over on the project. It take time to stabilize a project.
The answers may be rude, unfortunately, a lot of IT workers live this situation as a survivors or got replaced by workers from another country. This situation put the burden on the survivors (IT workers and middle management), the stress and the overtime increase, leading to burn out. Usually following that, there is multiple good workers that give their notice. The peoples that created this situation rarely get impacted. It seems the first time you live that situation. View it from the human angle, Alice has good intents, it seems to be outside of your responsibilities, take care of yourself
Why do you think it's up to you to to mend the bridge here? Management is obviously content to sabotage a system of projects that saves their company $3M/year. Are you sure you want to interfere with their initiatives?
@Von "Apparently we "need" to use shell, python, terraform, and node, instead of 1 language. Not sure why." - Because each of them serves a very different purpose and doing everything in either one of them would be either nigh on impossible or much more difficult than it is while using all 4. Seems like Alice knows her stuff - and you don't. Also, typically, most people in your team will be able to work with it with just a a basic-to-intermediate knowledge of 2-3 of the 4. If they lack that, then they indeed are junior contractors. One good engineer is worth countless average interns.
Is it a private company ? If this is a private company and if "Jeb" is a relative or a closed friends of the owner ? If yes, then there is nothing for you to do (except to look for a new job and take Alice with you). ---- However, if this is a public company, then go and talk to the CEO to solve the issue.
"I'm working with a team of software and devops engineers" - Please clarify your position in relation to that team. What have you been old to do with them? Are you their new lead? Are you Alice's replacement? Do you have clear instructions from management?
Sorry, but the way you are doubting the technical decisions - "Is it possible Alice just made her work too complex for others to learn?", "But why does each and every team member supposedly need to know all 4 at the same time, or be experts in all 4 at the same time?" - you are not in a mindset to mend things. In fact, you are very close to being part of the problem. You have a stellar performer and your instinct is... to think she is exploiting you. You clearly have little technical understanding but are casting doubt way beyond your comfort zone.
@Hans-MartinMosner It's actually not only "close to zero", but basically negative. There's a reason new hires are not given unrestricted production access. People that don't know what they're doing will literally DESTROY work, and have a negative productivity. Alice may not necessarily be a 10x engineer, but your new contractors aren't going to be productive for probably 6 months or more, even if Alice is fully co-operative in knowledge transfer, which she probably wouldn't be.
This could just be trolling. Have you actually hired completely new people and tasked them with handling, and I quote, "inventing new solutions, helping multiple teams", which is what Alice no longer does?
Maybe Alice has a good feel for the way the business works. Maybe she doesn't really do more work than anyone else, she just does the right thing. It sounds as if the business will be screwed when she leaves. If I were in your position I'd leave now, before the deathmarch starts.
On my program we have 3 programming languages, 2 script languages, javascript, lots and lots of frameworks and third party tools. The fact your project only has four is a actually a huge positive.
@Von I'm not sure I understand your doubt about "Is Alice just flexing, or is there something I'm not seeing here? Is a 10x engineer a real thing?", given you also factually mention how "Alice steps in for 1 hour, and does the work of the entire week's worth of the 20 junior contractors.". If she was faking, how would she manage this, how would she show up real results?
Discussion on question by Von: Fixing…
Discussion on question by Von: Fixing…