alt Hacker NewsI don't know that I care much for the mythologization of effective developers as "Wolves" and "10x-ers" which are this decade's equivalent of Ninja / Rockstar / Guru, but a similar less tech-centric version of that is just the concept of the "Maverick" within any organization and the parallels aren't too far regardless of the industry you're talking about. Outsized impact in undersold roles with a lot of heavy swinging soft power earned through merit.
It's strange to intentionally try to place or manufacture mavericks within your org for (at least) two reasons:
1. They're emergent phenomena. It's probably more valuable on average to examine WHY someone skipping all of your processes is effective than it is to make the conditions right for someone to become that maverick. Theoretically anyone CAN be that person, but unless something is actively going wrong it probably won't happen.
2. Process exists because it makes your org more efficient. When you start building your teams around the idea of someone explicitly being the maverick(s), ask yourself: "Who exactly is going to reconcile all of this against the framework that the entire rest of the company runs on? Is the rest of that person's team relegated to damage control and cleanup crew, and is that actually more effective than having an equivalent number of mid-level performers all pulling in the same direction?"
In the world of tech, the alleged 10x-er often manifests itself as: Tech Debt, but at High Volume™!
Replies
> Process exists because it makes your org more efficient
That is one hell of an assumption.
> Process exists because it makes your org more efficient
Nah. Process mostly exists because management doesn't have visibility into what engineering is doing, so they have to poke vertical holes through the org to know what everyone is up to.
Process is often pitched as improving coordination between teams, but that's more of a fringe benefit than the actual reason for process.
You are confusing concepts.
What the original article described is an engineer who could not stand by and let a painful problem with an obvious solution not be solved. the key point of the so called wolf is the obviousness of the solution. it was. ot obvious to anyone else, and to anyone else it would have been a major investment. the 10x does not come from frantic coding, it comes from a comprehensive and unique understanding that translates to code quickly due to motivation and understanding.
Process does not make an org more efficient. it makes it more consistent. if the baseline efficiency is low, the consistency of an improved set of work practices will ofcourse improve efficiency.
What a process often does is overfitting. Overfitting to the most common buiness need, sometimes overfitting to the noisiest patholgies seen.
The problem with process overfitting is that it excludes efficient solutions for problems that don't fit the previous set of business needs, or are not at risk of the previous set of pathologies. sometimes the process has a good pressure valve for this, pull the andon cord. do some kaizen, fire up the CMM level 5 KPAs. but sometimes just applying bespoke judgment is better.
I have been the wolf he describes. I also have been the manager he describes who lets the wolf have space and stand up for themselves. i have also been the manager who creates process and worflows and alignment and blah blah to dampen the noise of individual agency.
tech debt is an orthogonal concern.