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The 10x developer is not a myth (2013)

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Re: The 10x developer is not a myth (2013)

#231

Post by kharak »

TimJYoung wrote: post #131
kharak wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe 0.5x? I'm sure I had a negative performance impact on my former team. They would have been faster doing all features by themselves instead of reviewing and correcting my pull requests. New team isn't as good as the other one, but I'm still behind. I've learned quit a lot in the former team, the new team on the other hand.. I've hardly coded anything this year. I work with code, but I don't build stuff. As a res…

Do you like software development, in general ? In other words, is there something that you've worked on in the past that you were passionate about, and found yourself thinking about, even when not "working" ? If the answer to any of the above is "yes", then you may just need to find another job that better suits your interests and needs in terms of career progression. Software development jobs can vary greatly in ter…

Your first sentence is exactly what I've asked myself recently. What do I think about once I'm no longer sitting at my desk? What kind of problems does my brain try to solve?

Incongruously, I think mostly about non coding related problems. Still, if I understand the code base and its frameworks, the degree of coding related thinking increases substantially.

But normally, I automatically think more about "How to improve the reviewing process? How to improve onboarding? How to calculate costs? How to organize / improve our customer support?" and similiar problems. Those topics are all more in the project manager department. Maybe I'm better suited for that kind of role, but I can't take myself seriously if I haven't build a strong tecnical skillset.

Re: The 10x developer is not a myth (2013)

#232

Post by smithsmith »

BoiledCabbage wrote: post #163
awkward wrote: post #101

The reason for pushback on the idea 10x programmers isn't the real gradient of skill, it's the labor aspect. Lots of companies want to hire 10x without paying 10x dollars, and they've figured out that blowing smoke up the ass of young people (though it works better on young men than women) is a way to squeeze blood from that stone. Especially if you're working in a small company, you're going to hit a point when ther…

The 10x programmer idea really is a overall negative influence on our industry. Yes they exist, and acknowledging that is the only benefit that came from it. All of the negatives are: You get significant Lake Wobegon, and a ton of people think they are 10x that aren't (including a significant portion of people on this very website). People attempt to measure their 10xness in comparison to the worst engineer they know…

I concur. This concept is just annoying to the employer as high wage should be paid, when all the developer are almost the same.

Re: The 10x developer is not a myth (2013)

#234

Post by TeMPOraL »

flukus wrote: post #221
poikniok wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"scrum" I found your issue. I don't think 10x developers work in places that do "scrum", as if they are some low skill assembly line worker. You think Jeff Dean does "scrum"?

So 10x programmers don't work anywhere with a somewhat objective performance metric? I don't think that's a coincidence.

No. Rather, they avoid places which employ procedures designed to get consistent output out of mediocre workers. Such processes naturally exchange flexibility for consistency of results, but lack of flexibility will cripple a 10x programmer.

Re: The 10x developer is not a myth (2013)

#235

Post by taneq »

zeofig wrote: post #25
Danihan wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a thousand gradients of skill level, dividing it into 2 or 3 stereotypes is facile and pointless.

There are actually just millions or billions of discrete points, one for each programmer. Implying that they can be approximated by some kind of continuous gradient is quite frankly insane and unfounded.

Each of those 'programmers' is millions or billions of data points, one for each neural circuit. Implying that they can be approximated by a single discrete point is disingenuous and misleading.

Re: The 10x developer is not a myth (2013)

#237

Post by ozim »

nojvek wrote: post #110
awkward wrote: post #101

The reason for pushback on the idea 10x programmers isn't the real gradient of skill, it's the labor aspect. Lots of companies want to hire 10x without paying 10x dollars, and they've figured out that blowing smoke up the ass of young people (though it works better on young men than women) is a way to squeeze blood from that stone. Especially if you're working in a small company, you're going to hit a point when ther…

In addition not being able to measure 10x just makes things hairy. Am I a 10x, probably if you ask me to pump a couple of CRUD pages. Am I a 10x in adding features to a compiler. Probably not. If a business hires me thinking I am a 10x-er they have high hopes that I can't satisfy for their dimension of X. There are good programmers, great programmers and dangerous programmers. But that's all relative to what work nee…

Gets even more funny when you add team dynamics, in one team you can be 10x programmer if people are decent. When you are in a team with maybe not better guys than you so they don't have to be really 10x you and you just feel bad, you might not pump even 1x off yourself.

Re: The 10x developer is not a myth (2013)

#238

Post by hinkley »

jaimebuelta wrote: post #69
nostrademons wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was a weird example to me because anyone who's dealt with exponential traffic increase knows that you will end up rewriting several times. Dean's Law: "Plan for 10x growth, but expect to rewrite before 100x": https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.c... (page 11) Additionally, one thing the best programmers I know have all drilled into me is don't write code speculatively . You should write co…

THIS: It's very much a novice mistake (one that I've made a dozen or so times, sigh) to think that you can jump straight to your "ideal" architecture without any of the steps or missteps along the way. Code evolves as the problem evolves and NEEDS to be adapted. Is impossible to foresee the future.

I would go even farther here.

Without an established culture of adaptation and refactoring, your team lacks the perspective necessary to know what the 'right' architecture is.

The paradox here is that people who could extract the most benefit from a rewrite don't have to ask for one, and those least equipped to benefit constantly blame their problems on the lack of one.

At the end of the day, the rewrite or 'perfect architecture' is a dodge. You get to be left alone for 4-8 months with nobody hassling you, which means the perverse incentive is:

    rewrite = peace and quiet

Re: The 10x developer is not a myth (2013)

#239

Post by jononor »

kgu wrote: post #137
jononor wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People vary yes, but do we have 10x variation in performance? Actually for 10x to be a meaningful size, would need significantly more variation. Can one find support for such level of variation in other, more well studied fields? Say students, managers, factory workers?

Sorry for the downvotes; I upvoted you to correct. I think it's an interesting question. There are probably fields where it's possible and fields where it's not. Some students certainly outperform others by a factor of ten. I'd hesitate to score managers numerically, but it seems plausible that working for one could feel ten times more smooth or whatever than working for another, whatever that means. Intuitively, pro…

Re 'factory worker'. When I studied, I worked part-time in a shop selling bicycles. One of my main tasks was assembling & tuning the bicycles (they come flatpacked). I recall that on my first day (as a 14 year old with no prior experience), I could only complete one bike, with another one in progress. The teaching was mostly 'here are the tools, tell us when done/stuck'. A couple years, maybe 1000 hours of experience later, I would average around 3 bikes per hour. So, a factor 12-15 speedup. This was basically as fast as the guys who had been doing it 20-30 years full-time. I stayed basically at that level until I stopped at 6 years. Note, this was no sweatshop, just a pretty active and successful self-owned store.

It is possible that those that assemble Ikea furniture for a living have 10x over a typical Ikea-buyer.

Re: The 10x developer is not a myth (2013)

#240

Post by jononor »

jononor wrote: post #239
kgu wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry for the downvotes; I upvoted you to correct. I think it's an interesting question. There are probably fields where it's possible and fields where it's not. Some students certainly outperform others by a factor of ten. I'd hesitate to score managers numerically, but it seems plausible that working for one could feel ten times more smooth or whatever than working for another, whatever that means. Intuitively, pro…

Re 'factory worker'. When I studied, I worked part-time in a shop selling bicycles. One of my main tasks was assembling & tuning the bicycles (they come flatpacked). I recall that on my first day (as a 14 year old with no prior experience), I could only complete one bike, with another one in progress. The teaching was mostly 'here are the tools, tell us when done/stuck'. A couple years, maybe 1000 hours of experience…

I can also do programming things in 1x which friends who fiddle with Arduinos can't do in 10x the time. But they are non-professionals, and may even stuggle with fizzbuzz.

But in a professional setting I've yet to meet a single developer I would claim to 10x. Probably not even 5x. Unless one would look isolated at tasks that requires specialized or domain knowledge which the other person doesn't happen to have. And I'm pretty sure there would be tasks where same person would nX me.

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