If you have been in the software industry for a while, it is very likely you have come across the term “10x engineer”. This typically refers to a software engineer that leads to an order of magnitude higher productivity compared to an average software engineer, hence the name. There is ample debate on the Internet on the topic, so I won’t add to it. Today, I want to talk about a different type of software engineer, the “10? engineer”.
This is the software engineer who is inquisitive by nature. An engineer that will ask an order of magnitude more questions than your average software engineer, hence the name. Of course, asking questions is not something terribly impressive or useful, unless you are willing to look for the answers to those questions. And this is the super power of this category of engineers. This engineer tends to be inherently curious and will try to understand everything that seems confusing or not entirely clear to them. Rarely will they ever do something one way because that is the way everyone does it or because that way just works and “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. Instead, they will try to understand the underlying reason why that way works, why it works better than other ways and sometimes what are the ways or special scenarios this way might not work at all. Having such an engineer in your team or organisation can make a huge difference for various reasons.
A 10? engineer will continuously expand his expertise and consequently the expertise of those around them. They will never settle for mediocrity, but they will also understand that achieving mediocrity is the necessary step to greatness. As part of a team, they will create a healthy learning environment, where ideas are challenged in good faith so that the team can reach the best end result. The benefits from depth of knowledge are relatively well known to most people and this is one of the ways people are assessed and rewarded in the industry (and sometimes academia). What is more interesting though is a 10? engineer will not only traverse in depth, but also in breadth. This is the person that will get intrigued by issues on other fields, such as law, marketing, finance, sales etc. They might end up reading about the latest regulation around digital services or data protection. This cross-polination of knowledge can lead to very useful situations. When designing a system, these engineers are the ones that can typically think out of the box and uncover important requirements that might not be satisfied by the current design. Even better, these engineers have the panoramic view needed to identify market gaps and needs that could be fulfilled with a new product or service. However, apart from the knowledge this engineer naturally brings to the table, there is something much more important. And this is phychological safety. It is the awareness that there are so many things they don’t know at the moment and that will always be the case. This gives the collaboration with other people a very different taste. Questions are not seen as signals of weakness, but as signals of strength in acknowledging the limits of one’s knowledge and the need for continuous learning. This leads to people asking more questions and responding to questions from other people less defensively. Code reviews are not a medium of approval anymore, but a medium of learning. Mistakes are not seen as moments of deep embarassment, but as opportunities for retrospection and learning. Incident reviews are not finger-pointing exercises anymore, but they become a way to discover and fix systemic issues.
Similar to the mythical 10x engineers, 10? engineers can also have intricate failure modes though. People generally like to remain inside their comfort zone, so having a person that naturally challenges things is not something easy to incorporate in all the environments. This is a reason why 10? engineers and their motives can easily be misunderstood. And also the reason why 10? engineers have naturally evolved their ways of working (e.g. ways of providing feedback, raising issues etc.) to reduce the probability of this happening. As alluded previously, being inquisitive is generally a useful trait, but in some situations it can be disruptive and non-productive. So, 10? engineers have to sharpen their situational awareness in order to be able to understand when to probe into things without causing disruption or impacting the productivity of the team. And of course, 10? engineers need to be aware of the impact the constant seeking of truth can have to their mental health, since there are only so many hours in a day and the human brain needs rest in order to function properly.
I am going to end this post here even though I would love to write much more about the 10? engineer, because I am afraid this will be yet another post that remains in a half-done state and never gets to be published. I hope it is still a good read.
As the great Albert Einstein said:
“The important thing is not to stop questioning.”