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You're Not a 10x Programmer
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Re: You're Not a 10x Programmer
#12Don't tell me what I am and what I am not.
People understand the "Olympics" in terms of sport, but they don't understand the exact same logic when applied to a craft. If you start early, if you focus on incrementally improving and you spend a very long time perfecting your craft, you can be a very, very productive programmer.
I have no idea why, but I'm seeing more and more people doing these kind of articles. I suspect they are coping mechanisms of the authors.
Re: You're Not a 10x Programmer
#13I'm not a 10x. Ok, I'll concede that point. I'll be average for this conversation. I know people who can just solve problems . If it takes me all day to solve something, I'll reach out to Ken and he'll say "oh, check this setting. It is probably X". Dennis has seen so many problems, he knows how I've tried to solve them and the solutions before I've finished describing what is going on. If these guys solve something…
Perhaps Ken has already had spent 80 hours on a similar problem-solving, so this is why he got a smell of your problem. For you it looks like magic, because you went no same paths. If you would spend 80 or 800 hours on some topic you will also become an expert "the Ken".
Some people are curious and constantly learning new things. Some people don't and just do the same stuff over and over again. So the fact some people are more experienced than the others even after spending the same number of years in the industry is actually on them, it's their achievement.
I've seen a few situations where an "experienced" team of developers struggled to solve a problem for weeks and eventually an outsider, with even no prior experience with the technology stack / framework they were using, came and fixed it for them in a day. People like that definitely exist and they are not effective because they have just solved the same problem before. I think they are effective because they often learned the fundamentals (theory) properly and then they spent a lot of time in different areas. I guess there is some kind of a network effect there - if you solved problems of unrelated types A, B, C you're more likely to be able to solve a different problem D, than a person who only ever solved problems of type A.
Re: You're Not a 10x Programmer
#14What I'm not is a 0.1x programmer, and there are plenty of those out there.
Re: You're Not a 10x Programmer
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps Ken has already had spent 80 hours on a similar problem-solving, so this is why he got a smell of your problem. For you it looks like magic, because you went no same paths. If you would spend 80 or 800 hours on some topic you will also become an expert "the Ken".
Some people are curious and constantly learning new things. Some people don't and just do the same stuff over and over again. So the fact some people are more experienced than the others even after spending the same number of years in the industry is actually on them, it's their achievement. I've seen a few situations where an "experienced" team of developers struggled to solve a problem for weeks and eventually an o…
I think of this as a "knowledge map". The more you cover the white spots on the map, by randomly probing all over the domain (i.e. years of experience), the better you can make reasonable assumptions about yet unexplored territory, connecting the dots. Monte-Carlo knowledge probing -- I cannot get all local maxima, but I have an understanding of the general topography.
Re: You're Not a 10x Programmer
#16This 10x notion really needs to go away. Somehow a very narrow, limited scope metric grew into something that people believe can be a general capability metric of a profession that is supposed to be rather complex. It’s like saying in one study the highest scoring SAT students scored 10x the lowest (say 1600 vs. 160) and now there is a concept of 10x high-schooler. This is just plain silly and juvenile notion.
Re: You're Not a 10x Programmer
#17I’ve know several programmers who I would consider to be 10X.
You get an X multiplier when you have a lot of experience with the programming language.
You get an X multiplier when you’ve built lots of similar things.
You get an X multiplier when you understand related technologies in depth.
You get an X multiplier when you really understand how the computer works.
You get an X multiplier when you really understand the operating system.
You get an X multiplier when your damn smart.
You get an X multiplier when you’re organized and systematic.
You get an X multiplier when you know how to solve problems quickly.
You get an X multiplier when you work hard.
You get an X multiplier when you’re creative and can “see” systems in your head.
You get an X multiplier when you’re happy an motivated.
Re: You're Not a 10x Programmer
#18Don't tell me what I am and what I am not. People understand the "Olympics" in terms of sport, but they don't understand the exact same logic when applied to a craft. If you start early, if you focus on incrementally improving and you spend a very long time perfecting your craft, you can be a very, very productive programmer. I have no idea why, but I'm seeing more and more people doing these kind of articles. I susp…
Right? Like I’m a seriously mediocre programmer in terms of output and code quality. I work with a person who churns out 5x more features with code quality that is unassailable. Either I am a 0.2Xer or my colleague is a 5Xer, either way, there is a huge delta between our skill even though they are younger than me and we started programming at a similar age. I think 10Xer is probably hyperbole in most cases but the overall idea is legit.
Re: You're Not a 10x Programmer
#19There are definitely programmers whose output/delivery is 10x higher than some other programmers. Whether they are 10x and 1x or 1x and 1/10th programmers respectively can be debated, but I feel the former is a more positive way to look at it :)
Re: You're Not a 10x Programmer
#20An easy example of a 10x programmer is just someone who has inside out knowledge about the business. I.e. someone who should have switched jobs to get a serious raise years ago.