Software Engineers

People love to argue about the so-called “10x engineer”, which in the techie world refers to a computer person who produces 10x as much value as the average computer person (when discussing people who write software and their corresponding output). I want to correct something. The 10x engineer is a misnomer because it actually should be “The 100x Engineer”. Not only is the 100x engineer quite real, but most people wildly underestimate the value provided by the very best talent. One reason for this is that the human brain is very bad at understanding probabilities, distribution, compounding returns, and exponential growth.

Software engineers tend to be smart people. Writing software is hard, and it’s entirely a discipline of exercising your brain cells to write the correct commands to make the computer do what you want it to do. Add in the layers of complexity that come with dealing with humans who want software to do something without necessarily knowing or understanding precisely what they want, and what you end up with is a fairly complicated practice.