> All of these activities did occur because good work speaks for itself ...<p>Good work very much <i>doesn't</i> speak for itself, typically software problems represent management problems more than a lack of people trying to do good work. This is such a wild claim vs what I've seen that it makes me quite suspicious of this article and the one before it. It is a nice story that there is a high-productivity engineer who just does great work and everything steams to a happy end out because they are just that hyper-competent. But that is a myth, and probably more a tell that the narrator is misreading something about the situation.<p>This looks a lot like a manager-once-removed undermining a reporting manager by supporting an engineer to go rogue. I'd believe that the engineer is actually doing good work, but then that suggests there are problems in the management culture here. Either the blog writer doesn't know how to manage managers, or the middle manager has a competence problem. From that assumption I'm not totally surprised that there are problems in the resulting software that one unusually capable engineer can expose with a few weeks of rogue work.
> Good work very much doesn't speak for itself<p>Some people are obviously very intelligent and for people with enough technical abilities this can be spotted (e.g. because they churn out a large volume of high-quality code with almost zero defects). I have definitely seen this.<p>But I have also seen a colleague getting promoted that took thrice the scheduled time to deliver on a low-impact project, planning 2-3 long meetings a week, with about 8 people, discussing details for hours and hours (of course without writing anything down). When he went on leave for a few weeks, leaving a significant backlog of work and noting to our manager that "it's trivial to release", I actually managed to release it. At the end-of-year review he was praised for "deliviring such a complicated project", while the higher impact project I worked on and delivered in 1/3rd of the scheduled time was seen as a "simple project" because it got delivered without any hiccups.<p>Often it's also just a matter of "this guy states facts with confidence so it seems he knows what he's talking about" (even when he gets the facts wrong). At some point I just stopped correcting him because if we disagreed people would just assume I was wrong. In other words, being good at talking helps your career <i>a lot</i>.
The point is the wolf does not need managment. He has built up a model in his head of the problem and solution space better that a team of 1x specialists. T expose it to "managment" , "oversight" and "accountability" is to destroy it, especially for the article that shows an innnovative solution to an organizational pain point. They may be poorly managed, but they may be well managed, either way the managment style likey does not match the particular problem and/or solution the wolf is adressing. One of the key premises of The Innnovators Dillema is that well managed companies are well managed in sweet spots of operation and struggle outside of that sweet spot.<p>Now, the wolf may benefit from hands off managment, but they will need leadership support. The author seems to have proposed a style of leadership centered around hands off managment and letting the wolf sink or swim. I would hope thismstyle of leadershio includes him holding a life support by the sidelines. (leadership != management)
Yep. Even the details provided suggest that (i) the "wolf" explicitly asked for a level of support from upper management that wasn't offered and (ii) when others eventually became aware of the testing framework, they were able to improve it. Neither of the two details provided vindicate the author's self-congratulation on spotting the wolf and choosing to keep it quiet.<p>There are definitely times when the best thing for upper management to do is stay the hell out the way, but this doesn't sound like it was obviously one of them.
This is an incredibly cringe article. From using “wolf” in a completely forced way, to full quoting a conversation that seemingly only misses “and that testing framework’s name? Albert Einstein”.
Man I'm glad someone said this. Incredibly cringe and unnecessary using the whole wolf analogy for, essentially, "someone who's good at their job". Gives off vibes of the whole "alpha/high value male" thing going on in social media.
It's like a linkedin article that has escaped from its cage.
I have to admit reading heroic stories like these is a guilty pleasure of mine. It's ridiculous, but strangely inspiring in a completely unrealistic way.
> Wolves don’t care if they are seen or not. Wolves are entirely focused on the self-selected essential project in front of them<p>The wolves analogy is simply wrong. Wolves work in packs.
lone wolf. maybe he missed the significance of lone in that phase when he heard it first and thought it could be dropped. That is my working assumption, it happens.<p>Whether or not the natural world has such wolves, its a fictional archetype.<p>It is a particularly common theme in Japanese fiction, where the deviation from the social hierarchy requires a stong force of individual will. Interesting it is also common in Japanese technology breakthrough documentaries.<p>Ogami Itto - Lone wolf and cub is the first thing that comes to mind when the author says wolf.
I read those stereotypes as people phantasizing about being wild and free and a fierce (coding) biest, without actually knowing the wild. But it does have the effect on me to not being able to take it serious. If they don't even know basic facts about the animal they want to use as their metaphor, I expect way more to be wrong.
He's a furry, you insensitive clod!
Not all wolves work in packs.<p>Hint: think of the widespread expression used in terrorism debates: "Lone wolf". It's a self radicalized/motivated individual acting independently and alone.
Lone wolves are not happy animals, though. They are less successful in hunts, they can’t take down large prey at all. They don’t generally produce offspring. They’re an unfortunate effect of the social structure of wolves, where young males who cannot find a place in the pack are expelled.<p>There are plenty of lone wolf developers, but you won’t find them in large teams. Or if you do, they’re dysfunctional. On their own, a lone wolf engineer is not generally able to complete large, important pieces of work. Some do! But they are exceptions.
Whether or not the natural world has such wolves, its a well formed fictional archetype.<p>You assume "lone wolf" types are "one trick ponies" who can't learn. You also assume the only interesting problem space for these people is technical/code.<p>The lone wolf has a big limitations in transitioning to scale:
1. managers do what the article suggested, and stay out their way. The lone wolf never gets the experience of being managed, so it is difficult to transition to manage others.
2. they don't get why others don't "get it". e,g the solution is clear , the code can be done in a day, the comprehensive system model in their head should be shared by everyone.... it takes time to understand that the average engineer works slow and steady on a small scale understanding.<p>I will suggest there is a lone wolf type manager too. This is not a productivity skill, but an adaptivity and mobility skill.
<i>> Hint: think of the widespread expression used in terrorism debates: "Lone wolf"</i><p>I'm pretty sure the author doesn't think managers should create a culture that attracts and promotes terror attackers.
> Wolves are the result of the work, not asking the question. Wolves don’t ask to be wolves; they are.<p>Whether or not you find this blurb interesting will probably determine whether or not this link is worth clicking to you.
I think this quote snipe without the context doesn't really do the article justice. The post is interesting both intellectually and in that it's already clearly controversial. This quote standing by itself is mostly just confusing and imo takes away from the discussion.
Google AI overview returned: “A ‘lone wolf’ is a wolf that has left its pack to find a new territory or mate, a natural dispersal behaviour crucial for genetic diversity.”<p>Interesting enough people do jump around to build their skills.
It helped me to think of it more as does-my-house-say-dead-engineer-storage-Wolf than awoo-Wolf.
This article has to be satire…
<i>"A lion doesn’t concern himself with the opinions of the sheep!"</i>
On National Geographic channel, I have seen cannibalism in lions and spotted hyneas.
“Jugglers and singers require a pay raise. You’re a Lannister”
> process has an unfortunate side effect of crushing innovation unintentionally<p>We've been taken over by PE and forced into a very strict Jira powered "Agile" with time tracking of how long cards are in progress, and all work needs to be planned pre-sprint.<p>I cannot even begin to explain the opportunity cost of all this to anyone with any sort of control. The art of building good software is continual improvement. Being able to improve something without planning it.
I have experienced some companies trying to tame wolves with agile type systems with poor results. I have seen wolves getting sick in cages, i have been seen wolves accomplishing amazing feats and being sidelined for not being team players by mediocre leadership because the leadership did not get recognition.
I 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.<p>It's strange to intentionally try to place or manufacture mavericks within your org for (at least) two reasons:<p>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.<p>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?"<p>In the world of tech, the alleged 10x-er often manifests itself as: Tech Debt, but at High Volume™!
You are confusing concepts.<p>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.<p>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.<p>What a process often does is overfitting. Overfitting to the most common buiness need, sometimes overfitting to the noisiest patholgies seen.<p>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.<p>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.<p>tech debt is an orthogonal concern.
> Process exists because it makes your org more efficient<p>That is one hell of an assumption.
> Process exists because it makes your org more efficient<p>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.<p>Process is often pitched as improving coordination between teams, but that's more of a fringe benefit than the actual reason for process.
Was this written by the 1980s business guy from Futurama?
The argument seems to be: don't promote/support good ideas or projects because if they're good they'll likely succeed without you, and then the initiator will be slightly more confident.<p>Which is phrased as "not my job" for some reason.
The message is that process is there to extract value from people with average skills and motivation. When you find someone very skilled and self motivated doing the right thing, don't let process hamper their way.
I thought the message is “you might really want to find and encourage and promote and support your best programming talent though overt action, but such overt action might in fact have the inverse unintended outcome, often best to ensure you know such people are in the team and ensure traditional management does not get in their way or piss them off with traditional corporate thinking, which has zero idea what great programming talent looks like or is motivated by.”<p>That’s what I read.
Same. New ideas are like starting a fire. Piling too much on top or blowing too hard will stop it. You (together, however distributed across roles) do have to assess if you can handle one more fire, if it comes on top, replaces an old one etc. Getting to this decision in your specific setup is the tough and important part.<p>10x people can be like one-shot LLMs, your request is for sure wildly underspecified and what you get is 90% determined by the "smoothing term" applied by not you. This is why the right amount and frequency of interation is needed.
This is how I took it, and what I lived through. Both the supportive boss that let me do my thing without getting in the way, and those who tried to manage everything and make me shut down.
But did OP actually suggest their job is to “ensure traditional management does not get in their way”? I’m almost certain their point was not to interfere even at that level, which is why they didn’t hype it up the chain and let it land on its own.
Part of not hyping it up the chain is also that a lot of these projects are experiments. They may work, they may not, and some pivots may be required along the way. As soon as something is hyped to leadership, now there are feature lists, timelines, and expectations. All room for creativity and experimentation are gone.<p>I’ve gotten in the habit of not telling anyone about side efforts I’m working on until they’re done, and even then, I usually only tell the people who it might be of use to. I’ve been burned too many times by people trying to “help” or placing a lot of extra expectations and pressure on something. I don’t know if something will work until it works.
i'm supporting a small org with their decision making and feedback systems.<p>reading this post, i see that the founder (already in his 60s) is in many ways that "Wolf" as described here, and he's not great at managing the team around him.<p>any suggestions what structure/ team set up is working well in such a scenario?
A feel good article where you can choose to self insert as the wolf or the wise manager who knew to be “hands off”.<p>To someone actually running a company this looks like absolute corporate nonsense. Don’t categorize people like this, it’s demeaning and weird. Why can’t we just treat people like adults.<p>Instead of “Oh yea he’s a total 10xer wolf,” try “Yea Mark, has some good ideas for a test framework we should consider”.
Hard agree. Nothing more offputting than being labeled and categorized like the corporate overlords are playing AeO II and I’m a "resource" to be acquired, harvested, used and/or discarded.
"omegas don t care what other people think, they simply do their thing", thats hoow you people sound, very dumb.
I've got to admit to being somewhat disappointed that the "wolf" in question wasn't the character from the film 'Pulp Fiction', because - at least in my mind - it's an apt example for Rand's original article.
"I didn't say anything to the manager - I made a subtle hint and prayed that they took it, because ... reasons. On this occassion, I lucked out"
I think OP's nickname is a good summary for my thoughts on this article
What an untalented writer. His prose is clunky and every paragraph drips with sanctimony and reaching generalizations.
I generally don’t take these articles too seriously but a question has been popping up in my mind.<p>What the hell is the incentive of the guy posting this to encourage and help The Wolf??? He’s just doing it out of good will? What does he get out of doing the right thing? No recognition. No bonus. Nothing. Yet he still does it.<p>I find this fascinating.
Some people genuinely want to help others, without any immediately visible reward.<p>I won’t say it’s necessarily altruistic, as of course there could be a drive from inner machinations that we’d never be privy to.<p>(Sometimes the exposure of an article can be considered a reward, for those looking for ego inflation)<p>Even myself, I generally don’t leave comments unless I feel they’re going to be helpful or insightful to someone else.
But I am also biased, as I do have a very strong affinity towards sharing information, so I greatly appreciate the effort artisans and those more knowledgeable than I go through to share such knowledge.
I had a boss like this. He didn’t stand me up in front of everyone to show stuff off, but each year when it came time for raises and bonuses, he always took care of me. But those raises were never conditional or tied to whatever project I was working on.<p>I got the recognition in my paycheck, which was the only place I wanted it. I prefer to work quietly behind the scenes. It wasn’t about any one project, but consistently delivering whatever it was I was delivering, without much input or interference.
I find it fascinating that people find it fascinating that people just want to do right by others. I get that this is in the context of a workplace, and there is always some level of competition between people, but personally, I never gave that more weight than being happy and feeling good about how I treat others.
He’s building credibility as an engineering management consultant.
He got attention?<p>Building a reputation of being wise?
sure is nice to be paid for staying out of the way.<p>i think i am an expertise on not getting into other people's business. can someone pay me?
This just in: Wolves is the new hype word for the mythical 10x employee.
Just in from 2014, when the original article referenced in the first line of this one was written, opening 'You've heard of the 10x engineer, I'm here to tell you about the Wolf'?
Nice to see Rands back.<p>Refreshing writing in a world of AI slop.<p>People wonder how to find great developers - what even <i>IS</i> a great developer in the world of AI, do they still exist or did AI level them all out with the playing field?<p>They’re still around - they can talk with you in great depth about software and how it works ……. same as ever.