Comment by dasil003
3 years ago
You are correct in terms of raw talent. And I agree, there are a significant number of NNPPs in many teams who could be culled for a net increase in productivity.
However what this viewpoint doesn't account for are team dynamics. A strong TL can turn NNPPs into incremental positive contributors. A great programmer without leadership capabilities will not be able to outpace the technical debt. There are also more subtle dynamics depending on the structure and personality traits of the individuals. Ultimately programmer productivity is not an absolute value, it depends on the whole ecosystem (including other functions, leadership stance, etc). After doing this for 25 years (IC, TL, EM, CTO), I strongly believe a healthy team is about harnessing and orchestrating different individuals unique strengths rather than trying to set too high a bar—the latter will lead to counter-productive competition and ultimately burn out your best folks.
Sure, a great team lead can boost productivity of other engineers. But you dont end up with world changing products that way, you just end up completing some incremental project on time. Probably alot of the core innovations at OpenAI were done by < 10 people.
Way to move the goal posts and waltz right past my point without meaningfully engaging. I thought we were talking about engineers making $250k-$400k at big tech companies and what makes people productive. Now you're talking about the impact of small teams with the right talent in the right place at the right time. That's great, if you were at OpenAI over the last few years, or Google in 1998-2004, or Facebook from 2005-2009, I'd love to hear your thoughts on those moments that teams caught lightning in a bottle. For the rest of the 99.99% of industry, a reductive view of "fire your underperformers" is not necessarily going to net them better results.