> Good work very much doesn't speak for itself

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.

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.

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 a lot.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Whether or not the natural world has such wolves, its a fictional archetype.

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.

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.

Hint: think of the widespread expression used in terrorism debates: "Lone wolf". It's a self radicalized/motivated individual acting independently and alone.

There will always be this back-and-forth discussion of planning vs not-planning. The agile idea in itself is quite simple: Inspect and Adapt. My firm belief is that everything else needs to be build around that.

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.

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.”

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 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.

That's the norm across all industries.

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.

> 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.

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.”

That’s what I read.

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.

So basically just cats then?

Well the writer has had a number of books published which appear to have been successful. So he has found a market and delivered completed work.

Some people genuinely want to help others, without any immediately visible reward.

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.

(Sometimes the exposure of an article can be considered a reward, for those looking for ego inflation)

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.

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?

Building a reputation of being wise?

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'?