The 10x developer is not a myth (2013)

It's telling that there's no such thing as industry talent matrix. Instead of general skills - creativity, accuracy, speed, debugging insight, ability to learn new languages/frameworks, team leadership, good-to-have-around vs toxic asshole, and so on - we have this myth of "the rockstar".

A certain kind of management loves because rockstars because having them around reflects well on management (reason number one for hiring them) and supposedly they are super-productive (reason number two, which often turns out not to be true in practice, especially in a team setting.)

The hiring process tests for almost none of the qualities on the talent matrix. There's a ridiculous notion that knowing algos makes you a developer worth talking to, and a slightly less ridiculous notion that a bit of hazing tells you something about how well someone works under pressure.

The bottom line: that after all these decades we have far too little research defining the qualities that really matter in different work contexts, and almost no research at all into how to select for them.

Most just don't have the money, culture, management, fellow coworkers, or whatever else to keep that 10xer (often times even get them in an interview).

Seriously most companies can't even keep a 10xer janitor if they tried.

Whatever the case, these people are always outliers. Unfortunately that doesn't prevent teams from claiming that they only hire 10x's.

No one starts out as a 10x. Perhaps instead of focusing on who is or is not 10x or how many 10x's are out there, it is more interesting to explore HOW people BECOME 10x?

A more realistic view is that individuals are a moving target. Skill is something that needs to be nurtured, practiced and modeled by mentors in order for others to pick it up. Orgs that just stop at the fact that people are going to have a wide distribution of skills are doing a disservice to themselves and their employees.

Also, sample size would matter. Assume that there really is a Superwally out there who has worked in programming for seven years for some company without accomplishing anything at all. And I imagine that there is. It would matter a lot if he is part of the sample. In fact, the only sample that would make sense would be all programmers in the world, and now, thanks to Superwally, we all look pretty good.

And of course, there is probably some Hyperwally as well who can smugly boast seven years of negative productivity. Deleting random stuff, breaking functionality, leaving messy code for others to untangle. Adding Hyperwally to the equation and the relative productivity of everyone else would approach singularity levels.