Are You a 10x Programmer? Or Just a Jerk?
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Are You a 10x Programmer? Or Just a Jerk?
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Re: Are You a 10x Programmer? Or Just a Jerk?
#2This again. Here's something I churn out every time a 10x thread starts again. It has some references in it:
A 2nd edition of Peopleware summarises it; the 10x programmer is not a myth, but it's comparing the best to the worst; NOT best to median. It's also not about programming specifically; it's simply a common distribution in many metrics of performance.
The rule of thumb Peopleware states is that you can rely on the best outperforming the worst by a factor of 10, and you can rely on the best outperforming the median by a factor of 2.5. This of course indicates that a median developer, middle of the pack, is a 4x developer. Obviously, this is a statistical rule, and if you've got a tiny sample size or some kind of singular outlier or other such; well, we're all adults and we understand how statistics and distributions work.
Peopleware uses Boehn (1981), Sackman (1968), Augustine (1979) and Lawrence (1981) as its sources. [ "Peopleware", DeMarco and Lister, 1987, p45 ]
Re: Are You a 10x Programmer? Or Just a Jerk?
#3This article is strange, they provide lots of counter evidence that in fact there are 10x programmers. They don't really provide any evidence for their thesis at all except to say the concept makes others feel bad, and that they are too rare to base hiring decisions around.
Betteridge's law of headlines works here too as they later go on to say that being a jerk and a 10x programmer are unrelated concepts.
Re: Are You a 10x Programmer? Or Just a Jerk?
#4They 10x programmer exists.
The push for this team effect where everyone is equal is equally as foolish. 10 programmers producing 1x work will not produce the same work as the 10x programmer because the communication between those 10 will always be slower than one mind.
The problem occurs when the 10x meets the 3x developer. The 3x developer is use to being 3 times better on average so they think they are a 10x developer.
Take a 10x soldier/marine pair them up with 1x soldiers. The 10x soldier will always seem like a jerk to the rest because they know how to survive and will be pulling the team in that direction without discussion.
Put the 10x developer in charge and they will make the most of the 1x team members. Tell everyone they are equal the 10x developer will wonder why no one is pulling their own weight.
The problem is with the flatness of startups or with the easily replacable cog at large org. Everyone thinks that every developer is the same.
Re: Are You a 10x Programmer? Or Just a Jerk?
#510x programmers exist, but often it doesn’t matter. The only way one programmer is 10x better than the median of a team of solidly educated peers is in the very few extraordinarally difficult problems that require something like real genius. If there’s someone on a team doing 10x more average code than his or her peers it’s by avoiding other work that isn’t being tracked as carefully. Also, people who write less new code than others are often contributing above average on things like writing bug reports and doing thorough code reviews. FWIW I’m basing this mostly on real data from a multi year project.
Re: Are You a 10x Programmer? Or Just a Jerk?
#6Honestly I've never really concerned myself with the existence of 10x programmers or not, if they do exist I'm not one of them nor likely to ever be, As long as I'm more capable than I was this time last year I'm happy with that, it's kept programming challenging/interesting for 30 years.
My favourite recent feedback from a user was that "The system thinks the way I do and it reminds me when I've forgotten something".
The last couple of years I've branched out to putting much more focus on UX and trying to get ahead of what users are trying to get done and so it's nice to see positive feedback on that - It's funny but those little gentle touches that improve a users workflow mean more to them than all the underlying (or not) elegance of the code, it's a bit too easy to stare at a tree closely and miss the forest.
In a field as vast as ours you might be 10x at one one thing and 0.5x on something else entirely.
Re: Are You a 10x Programmer? Or Just a Jerk?
#7This again. Here's something I churn out every time a 10x thread starts again. It has some references in it: A 2nd edition of Peopleware summarises it; the 10x programmer is not a myth, but it's comparing the best to the worst; NOT best to median. It's also not about programming specifically; it's simply a common distribution in many metrics of performance. The rule of thumb Peopleware states is that you can rely on…
Ah, so 10X is just grade inflation..
If a 1X programmer is taken to be the worst or lowest quartile and not the median or competent programmer then this 10X is pointless and misleading.
This 1x programmer has no productivity whatsoever, has a negative contribution to any project they are on, damage designs and confuse meanings and doesn't even use the results of the time they consume from other programmers to improve because having copied the answer, their boss thinks they are improving and is off their back.
A top quartile programmer would be a more meaningful statement when considering HR decisions particularly since productivity is usually going to drop fast when changing workplace, domain, preferred languages, development styles, and coworkers.
You aren't getting 10x what you would expect given that you are optimistic in whoever you hire.. You are getting about 2.5x iff they are "10X".
Re: Are You a 10x Programmer? Or Just a Jerk?
#8When we say 10x programmer, are we comparing to the worst or median skilled programmer?
Re: Are You a 10x Programmer? Or Just a Jerk?
#9Hiring awesome devs is hard, my experience is that you are better off keeping the terrible devs out.
Some people will not add, they'll subtract, those should be kicked out quickly.
I'm not talking about experience level, an intern can help if properly guided, but if the dev is not engaged or has poor work ethic that can actually make others less productive.
Re: Are You a 10x Programmer? Or Just a Jerk?
#10When we say 10x programmer, are we comparing to the worst or median skilled programmer?
> When we say 10x programmer, are we comparing to the worst or median skilled programmer?
The worst.