Why "Normal" Engineers Are the Key to Great Teams - IEEE Spectrum

“When people talk about world-class engineering organizations, they often have in mind teams that are top-heavy with staff and principal engineers, or that recruit heavily from the ranks of former Big Tech employees and top universities. But I would argue that a truly great engineering org is one where you don’t have to be one of the “best” or most pedigreed engineers to have a lot of impact on the business. I think it’s actually the other way around. A truly great engineering organization is one where perfectly normal, workaday software engineers, with decent skills and an ordinary amount of expertise, can consistently move fast, ship code, respond to users, understand the systems they’ve built, and move the business forward a little bit more, day by day, week by week.”

https://spectrum.ieee.org/10x-engineer

Wondering how to square the pro-mediocrity stance in the linked cast with the existence of n-of-1 people like this.

Wondering how to square the pro-mediocrity stance in the linked cast with the existence of n-of-1 people like this.
https://www.dwarkesh.com/p/jeff-dean-and-noam-shazeer

Something like this?

- n-of-1 indiv unearths way to dent reality
- small agentic packs attempt to strike
- normie-ish collectives steer and stabilise
- mediocratising forces become stewards
- original dent dissipates into a tangled mess of higher order progress and decay in unfathomable ways

Stealing this take from Roon and signal-boosting it:

I’ve witnessed a few astonishing successes in my life

They were all best described as leveraged beta not alpha

@mnovendstern For those unfamiliar with financial jargon:

The biggest wins I've seen weren't from galaxy-brain original insight or skill. They came from spotting general trends or established patterns, then increasing exposure, leverage and commitment while everyone else stays cautious.

Jeremy Nixon

in motion | founder, researcher, scout, storyteller | into computing, communication, complex systems | building subset.network | all the things: msweet.net

Something like this?

- n-of-1 indiv unearths way to dent reality
- small agentic packs attempt to strike
- normie-ish collectives steer and stabilise
- mediocratising forces become stewards
- original dent dissipates into a tangled mess of higher order progress and decay in unfathomable ways
https://x.com/jvnixon/status/1900654827178197077