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Cover image for Develop the right thing every time and become a 10x engineer 🏆: The art of writing RFCs 🥋

Develop the right thing every time and become a 10x engineer 🏆: The art of writing RFCs 🥋

Matija Sosic on December 05, 2023

Imagine you’ve been tasked to implement a crucial new feature in the product you’re working on. That’s the opportunity you’ve been waiting for - ev...
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Martin Šošić

Another reason to write an RFC is you know there is a teammate that knows a lot about the part of the codebase you are about to work on, and you could use that knowledge -> RFC is then a good way to have an organized communication about it, they can see your plan, enrich it with their knowledge, and you know you are not missing anything out!

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Matija Sosic

Agreed, RFC is a great way to have a structured discussion about a feature/topic.

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aldin

I guess the biggest trickery is in defining our needs properly from the get-go, then it gets much easier to figure out whether the RFC is worthwhile. :)

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Matija Sosic

Hah yes, that's always the case, figuring out what you actually want or need! :) Any tips from your experience you'd share?

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zvone187

This is a good one - I never heard of RFC before!

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Matija Sosic

Glad you liked it and learned something new. RFCs are a really helpful tool for planning bigger features.

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Marine

Nice guide to RFCs, love that you included tools at the end!

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Matija Sosic

Thanks a lot and glad you found it useful!

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Matija Sosic

glad it helped! :)

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Bap

Great learnings, thanks!

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Matija Sosic

Thank you for reading and hope you found it useful!

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Kevin Lin

nice article!

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Matija Sosic

Thanks Kevin!

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Petar Cvitanović

Enjoyed this piece! Also, loved the diagram :)

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Matija Sosic

Thanks Petar! Yeah, it's a bit simplified so just a heuristic but I thought it might be a good starting point :)

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annaredbond

Nice!! I learned a lot here. Thanks for writing up!

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Matija Sosic

Thanks! I hope you find it as useful as we do :)

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vincanger

Nice post. learned a lot from this!

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Mihovil Ilakovac

RFCs >> dealing with 20 comments on the PR

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Mark Phelps

Great post!! We also follow a similar RFC process at Flipt.

QQ: Do you make all your RFCs public at Wasp?

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Matija Sosic • Edited

We actually make a lot of them public - it's super helpful when sharing RFCs with the community (e.g. ours is on Discord: discord.gg/rzdnErX), we get plenty of good ideas, and it also helps validate the direction faster.

The only reason why not all of them are public is that by default, they are private in Notion, so if it's a smaller RFC, it might already get merged before we open it up. But there is absolutely no reason not to have it all public!

Btw Flipt looks amazing, and I love that it is open-source, might be a great fit to go with Wasp :)

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Nevo David

I thought RFCs must be a white paper with boring long text :D

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Matija Sosic

haha :D Yellow is also fine! :)

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Tin Ceraj

Amazing. I'll definitely use this one in the future

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Matija Sosic

Thanks a lot Tin! Really glad you found this valuable :)

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Mike Stemle

Please stop perpetuating the myth of the 10x developer. This problematic idea promotes burnout and worsens imposter syndrome, while encouraging managers to push their people to work harder for less pay and fewer benefits.

The 10x developer myth is objectively harmful.

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Matija Sosic

Hey Mike, I appreciate the comment! But did you read the article, especially the Summary? My main point is actually that being a 10x developer doesn't mean coding more or faster, but rather taking more time to plan and collaborate with your colleagues.

Another thing is whether we should stop using the term "10x developer" altogether, is that what you had in mind? I personally don't think it will go away, and that it's not necessarily inherently wrong, but I believe we should all work together on improving its meaning. That could actually be a really interesting topic to cover.

Thanks again for giving it a look!

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Victor Goff

I agree. The 10x developer is one that is more like "Sharpen the axe and spend 10% of the time to chop down the tree." You get more done if you are planning and execute the right thing, than not planning and execute many wrong things first. Or you may still execute the wrong thing, but you are likely to at least be 10x closer to the right thing that much sooner.

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Matija Sosic

Thanks Victor, that is what I had in mind!

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Mike Stemle

Just like all other terms which cause harm by creating toxic fictions, the use of this term should indeed be discontinued.

There are a variety of terms which cause harm but are nonetheless unlikely to perish from our collective vocabulary, but this does not excuse their continued willful use.

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Matija Sosic

Thanks for the clarification, I see your point now. I agree there is that "myth" of a 10x engineer, when it is in reality just a person doing their job well, which is what we should all strive for by default. I don't think other professions use this term, e.g. "10x teacher" or "10x lawyer".

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Ivan Kunjasic

Interesting concept, thanks for sharing Wasp's example!

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Matija Sosic

Thanks Ivan!

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Biplob Sutradhar

Great 👍. Gifs and cover pic nice. And will trigger nice idea 💡