# hezarkhani-10x-paying-engineers-salespeople-2025-11-23

## Veille

Engineering Compensation - Story Points - Outcome-based Pay - 10x Engineers - Incentive Alignment

## Titre Article

Paying Engineers like Salespeople: How Tenex Rebuilt the Incentive Stack for Modern Engineering

## Date

2025-11-23

## URL

https://www.youtube.com/live/cMSprbJ95jg?si=4HnxK8w1ELvSr4tz&t=26101

## Keywords

Engineering Compensation, Story Points, Incentives, AI Productivity, Outcome-based Pay, 10x Engineer, 10x Company, AI Transformation

## Authors

Arman Hezarkhani (Co-founder, 10x)

## Ton

**Profile:** Provocative | Entrepreneurial | Radical | Visionary

Arman Hezarkhani adopts a deliberately provocative tone ("We pay engineers like salespeople"). He challenges the status quo (hourly/fixed salary) which he considers obsolete in the AI era. His discourse is energetic, illustrated with anecdotes (the "caveman" who codes character by character vs. himself with 45 agents). He proposes a radical but well-argued model, aiming to align incentives with pure output.

## Pense-betes

- **The problem with current incentives**:
- Hourly: No incentive to move fast (quite the opposite).
- Project/Fixed-bid: Risk for the developer (poor estimation), hence quote inflation.
- Salaried + Bonus: "Punch in, punch out," no direct link to exceptional performance.
- Equity: Too diluted or risky, developers often prefer cash.
- **AI's impact**: AI acts as a x10 distorting mirror. It makes excellent engineers incredible, and bad ones even more careless. It enables a tenfold productivity increase that isn't captured by fixed salary.
- **The 10x Model**:
- **Payment by Story Point**: Engineers have a base salary, but a quarterly bonus calculated directly on the number of Story Points completed and accepted.
- **Separate roles**: The "Strategist" (technical PM) defines and scopes the tickets (prevents inflation). The engineer executes.
- **Quality**: Validation by the Strategist AND the Client. If it's bad, it's not paid/accepted.
- **Results**: Ability to attract elite talent (ex-founders, NASA researchers) who want to be paid in line with their AI-augmented productivity.
- **Examples**: Image moderation for advertising billboards (96% accuracy in 2 weeks), "edge" video analysis for retail.

## RésuméDe400mots

Arman Hezarkhani, co-founder of 10x, presents a radical thesis: in the AI era, the traditional engineer compensation model (fixed salary or hourly rate) is obsolete because it fails to reward the exponential productivity enabled by modern tools. He observes a fracture between engineers who use AI extensively (orchestrating dozens of agents) and those who still code "like cavemen," character by character. For him, this is an incentive problem: why go 10 times faster if you're paid the same?

10x's solution is to **pay engineers like salespeople**, meaning based on performance, tied to actual output. Concretely, they use a system based on **Story Points**.
The workflow is as follows:
1.  A **Strategist** (a distinct role, compensated on customer satisfaction/NRR) defines the architecture and breaks the project down into tickets, assigning a point value to each.
2.  The **Engineer** executes the tickets.
3.  Once the ticket is validated by the Strategist and the Client (double quality control), the points are earned.
4.  Compensation includes a fixed base and a significant variable component indexed on the volume of points delivered.

Hezarkhani addresses the obvious criticisms (risk of declining quality, point inflation) through the role structure: the Strategist acts as a counterweight to the Engineer for scoping and validation. According to him, this model attracts "10x engineers" (former founders, elite researchers) who know they can produce enormously thanks to AI and want to capture a share of the value created, rather than waiting for a hypothetical exit through stock options. He concludes that AI grants superpowers, but that without an aligned compensation system, employees have no reason to use them to their full potential.

## GrapheDeConnaissance

- Arman Hezarkhani —a_créé→ 10x (ORGANISATION, 0.98)
- 10x —utilise→ Story Points (METHODOLOGIE, 0.95)
- modèle 10x —s_inspire_de→ rémunération commerciale (CONCEPT, 0.9)
- IA —permet→ amplification écart de productivité ingénieurs (CONCEPT, 0.92)
- Stratège —mesure→ travail ingénieur (CONCEPT, 0.88)
- salaire fixe —s_oppose_à→ productivité augmentée par IA (CONCEPT, 0.9)
- modèle 10x —permet→ attraction de talents élite (CONCEPT, 0.85)
- Arman Hezarkhani —affirme_que→ les incitations traditionnelles sont obsolètes (AFFIRMATION, 0.92)
- Stratège —réduit→ Story Points (CONCEPT, 0.85)
- 10x engineers —utilise→ agents IA multiples (TECHNOLOGIE, 0.8)

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Canonical: https://www.thekb.eu/en/fiches/hezarkhani-10x-paying-engineers-salespeople-2025-11-23/