Alan Cooper on the “10x” Programmer
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Alan Cooper on the “10x” Programmer
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Re: Alan Cooper on the “10x” Programmer
#2There will always be outliers but it really depends what thing the 10x programmer is making ten times more of. If it's simply lines of code then it can strongly be argued that he's creating 10x more technical debt as well, as one of the stories suggests. I've read that many outlier programmers are on the moderate-to-advanced portion of the autistic scale, at a place where it's actually a superpower in terms of being able to concentrate and write massive amounts of code and usually very good quality. The biggest problem with devs like that is that their colleages/teammates have a hard time keeping up with them and management usually tries to coerce others to try to catch up and not treat them like the benevolent freak they are. Even if there's no conflict with a high quality 10x performer there's also the future case problem of trying to figure out how to fill the shoes of such a dev if/when they leave. Management will never authorize hiring 10 people to replace that person, and unless the person was writing perfect code your maintenance is usually a lot more than your staff can handle as well. Are there other fields/jobs where someone can consistently produce 10x more than others simply on their own ability?
Re: Alan Cooper on the “10x” Programmer
#3There will always be outliers but it really depends what thing the 10x programmer is making ten times more of. If it's simply lines of code then it can strongly be argued that he's creating 10x more technical debt as well, as one of the stories suggests. I've read that many outlier programmers are on the moderate-to-advanced portion of the autistic scale, at a place where it's actually a superpower in terms of being…
I agree with this, for anyone to be a 10x developer, most likely their brain has massive deficiencies in other areas of functioning. I've only worked with one 10x developer in my life. After seeing his code and problem solving abilities, I started to question whether I was any good at coding at all (and I am regularly regarded as the best on my team).
Finance is another industry that supports 10x employees, its common for traders with a natural ability at pattern recognition to produce 10x - 100x returns. Like technology, their minds can be leveraged by increasing the amount of capital they can manage.
Re: Alan Cooper on the “10x” Programmer
#4>The 10x programmer is essentially a libertarian concept: That is, they do it all by themselves because they don’t recognize how much is done for them by others.
I'm finding myself meeting a lot of "10x" descriptors. I'm not doing 10x the work but I'm definitely doing the work of the next two highest performing colleagues put together.
I also see myself putting burdens on my team. My communication, teamwork, and managerial skills are poor and always will be. Yet I always seem to do things technically that makes people look at me like I discovered fire. For me to say I didn't outperform my colleagues would be effectively to say I had no value as an employee since there would be nothing to compensate for my shortcomings. There have been meetings about me where everybody except me was in the room and I was talked about and the only reasons the team decided not to fire me was my performance and work ethic.
It makes me feel really bad reading all the response to high performers that aren't well rounded like they are inherently arrogant toxic drags on a team. There's nothing wrong with having an employee with a lopsided skillset in a team that can support somebody like that. I think seeing such employees as inherently toxic, or seeing them as a holy grail. They're like artillery; only effective with support.
Re: Alan Cooper on the “10x” Programmer
#5All I can say is, it’s been my subjective experience that competence and productivity are really variable. Some people at my company can produce beautiful, working, end to end solutions for complex problems in the time it takes others to grind out trivial maintenance tickets. Everyone knows who they are. Programmers are not basically all the same, and it’s worth thinking about the nature of the differences if you want to become one of those people, hire them, retain them, grow your team to be more like them, etc. To write them all off as myths, children, assholes, etc. is to reject the possibility of substantially improving at our craft. That’s a dangerous thing to do.
Re: Alan Cooper on the “10x” Programmer
#6>The 10x programmer is essentially a libertarian concept: That is, they do it all by themselves because they don’t recognize how much is done for them by others. I'm finding myself meeting a lot of "10x" descriptors. I'm not doing 10x the work but I'm definitely doing the work of the next two highest performing colleagues put together. I also see myself putting burdens on my team. My communication, teamwork, and mana…
> My communication, teamwork, and managerial skills are poor and always will be.
Could you elaborate on how they're poor? And why you think it won't/can't change? You seem to have expressed yourself very clearly in this post, so at least when it comes to communication, I can't deduce any shortcomings (from this post).
Re: Alan Cooper on the “10x” Programmer
#7One interesting twist is that some problems are completely intractable for most programmers. I mean that they cannot produce a working solution no matter how much time or effort they use, or if they do it's so riddled with bugs it's practically useless.
Thus it follows that for certain tasks there are "∞x" programmers. Therefore there are absolutely "10x" programmers as well, which fits in with my subjective experience.
Certainly domain knowledge can play a very big role, but there are also rare individuals that seem to be much more productive no matter the task.
Re: Alan Cooper on the “10x” Programmer
#8There will always be outliers but it really depends what thing the 10x programmer is making ten times more of. If it's simply lines of code then it can strongly be argued that he's creating 10x more technical debt as well, as one of the stories suggests. I've read that many outlier programmers are on the moderate-to-advanced portion of the autistic scale, at a place where it's actually a superpower in terms of being…
The spectrum guys are good for deep dives and best operating practice based implementation, not so much on branching code and creativity.
Re: Alan Cooper on the “10x” Programmer
#9>The 10x programmer is essentially a libertarian concept: That is, they do it all by themselves because they don’t recognize how much is done for them by others. I'm finding myself meeting a lot of "10x" descriptors. I'm not doing 10x the work but I'm definitely doing the work of the next two highest performing colleagues put together. I also see myself putting burdens on my team. My communication, teamwork, and mana…
> My communication, teamwork, and managerial skills are poor and always will be. Could you elaborate on how they're poor? And why you think it won't/can't change? You seem to have expressed yourself very clearly in this post, so at least when it comes to communication, I can't deduce any shortcomings (from this post).
Autism. So text based communication isn't impaired. Also led me to spend a lot of time on the computer so I naturally got better at using them. I send a lot of emails at work and my co-workers will usually try and deal with walkups. Writing is a strong point for me.
There's little problems with communication like having the emotional intelligence to tell when your co-workers are having a hard time and when to back off and treat them differently. I lack that which puts extra stress on them. I tend to say too much and make my team lose face and cause us political problems. So I try to compensate by doing such a good job my co-workers won't be under as much pressure to work hard and my team will be doing such a good job we won't get in shit.
Re: Alan Cooper on the “10x” Programmer
#10There will always be outliers but it really depends what thing the 10x programmer is making ten times more of. If it's simply lines of code then it can strongly be argued that he's creating 10x more technical debt as well, as one of the stories suggests. I've read that many outlier programmers are on the moderate-to-advanced portion of the autistic scale, at a place where it's actually a superpower in terms of being…
> Are there other fields/jobs where someone can consistently produce 10x more than others simply on their own ability?
Sales. Some people can make it rain and generally nobody begrudges paying them well to do so.