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1x Programming

tim.mcnamara.nz

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Re: 1x Programming

#31

Post by duxup »

jt2190 wrote: post #22
Msw242 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have a small team (8 devs) and we've focused a ton of energy on developer experience and ergonomics to reduce the cost of contribution and code reviews, and facilitate interaction with other stakeholders. I'm confident at this point that we've doubled productivity, which would make our "Head of" a 10x engineer :)

> Doubled productivity… 10x… Since we’re putting numbers on things, how did we go from 2x to 10x?

It’s only 10x if he is so productive that he doesn’t have time for his teammates;)

Re: 1x Programming

#32

Post by aaaaarghZombies »

jt2190 wrote: post #22
Msw242 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have a small team (8 devs) and we've focused a ton of energy on developer experience and ergonomics to reduce the cost of contribution and code reviews, and facilitate interaction with other stakeholders. I'm confident at this point that we've doubled productivity, which would make our "Head of" a 10x engineer :)

> Doubled productivity… 10x… Since we’re putting numbers on things, how did we go from 2x to 10x?

I think they mean by helping 8 people double productivity they achieved at least 10x maybe 16x

I suppose you could also be 10x everyone else you work with by deliberately sabotaging the rest of your team...

Re: 1x Programming

#33

Post by theamk »

unwind wrote: post #11

Has anyone published some kind of quantified, "hard" comparison/survey about the relative productivity of programmers? It would be very interesting with a clean "we asked n programmers to solve this"-type problem, and then being able to compare the solutions. Uh, did I just sound like I wanted to work in recruiting? #fail

There is a link to this right in the post. In fact, it is the first link in the post. Here it is:

https://href.li/?https://third-bit.com/talks/greatest-hits/?...

Re: 1x Programming

#34

Post by [deleted] »

phendrenad2 wrote: post #20

I've never met a 10x engineer. (Does that make me the 10x engineer? I doubt it). Personally I believe that the myth of the 10x engineer comes from the very real and very visible fact that often times, one engineer will be 10x as productive as someone sitting in the next desk over. Why is this? There are numerous factors, and certainly innate skill and programming practice come into play. But I think that only gets yo…

[deleted]

Re: 1x Programming

#35

Post by Izkata »

unwind wrote: post #11

Has anyone published some kind of quantified, "hard" comparison/survey about the relative productivity of programmers? It would be very interesting with a clean "we asked n programmers to solve this"-type problem, and then being able to compare the solutions. Uh, did I just sound like I wanted to work in recruiting? #fail

About a decade ago my company had a thing set up where were could complete coding challenges and other devs would rate them anonymously (so you couldn't rate a specific person highly unless you recognized their style). Once you completed a challenge you could see others' submissions and a ranking of how much someone's solutions were liked. Ordering was fairly consistent, with a few people recognizably always being in the top third or so (out of around 15-25 people who bothered to try the challenges, IIRC).

The original purpose of these challenges were to help people learn python, as we'd just officially moved to it not long before I joined, so to give an idea of the complexity involved, the only one I can remember was "implement a brainfuck interpreter". It was really interesting to see the different ways people organized code that did the same thing.

Re: 1x Programming

#36

Post by bragr »

>Even if you’re coding for yourself, you’re still coding for a team. Your future self will not have the same cognitive context that you do currently.

This. I've definitely cursed the author of some code only to realize it was me 5 years ago and I have absolutely no memory of the code or the problem.

Re: 1x Programming

#37

Post by latenightcoding »

phendrenad2 wrote: post #20

I've never met a 10x engineer. (Does that make me the 10x engineer? I doubt it). Personally I believe that the myth of the 10x engineer comes from the very real and very visible fact that often times, one engineer will be 10x as productive as someone sitting in the next desk over. Why is this? There are numerous factors, and certainly innate skill and programming practice come into play. But I think that only gets yo…

I have and I'm sure others here have too. It's usually people who are not only skilled coders but are capable of staying ultra focused for longer hours. Go check you favorite team project on github and open the list of contributors, notice anything?

Re: 1x Programming

#38

Post by bee_rider »

Should we read this as an implicit comparison to what a 10x programmer is? It seems like this is mostly just having a sane work-life balance and actually targeting deliverables. I guess I'd expect a 10x programmer to have a bad work-life balance, but also still target deliverables... just somehow, better (I'm not sure I understand what a 10x programmer is supposed to be).

> Users care about themselves. To them, they need to be the primary priority. This rift causes a problem when open source maintainers decide that their users are indeed secondary. But that might be the theme of a future post.

That came from out of left field.

I enjoy using open source programs, but understand that open source software is released to the universe as a favor, and the author has no obligation toward users like me. The ideal form of open source is just that you solved your own problem, and were kind enough to share the solution with the rest of us. If I wanted my needs to be a priority, I'd look for a relationship where I was the customer. The only issue I can see with letting user needs become secondary is that this is far too high of a priority, it leads to confusion and might infest the project with an unhealthy customer-service mindset.

Re: 1x Programming

#40

Post by nescioquid »

phendrenad2 wrote: post #20

I've never met a 10x engineer. (Does that make me the 10x engineer? I doubt it). Personally I believe that the myth of the 10x engineer comes from the very real and very visible fact that often times, one engineer will be 10x as productive as someone sitting in the next desk over. Why is this? There are numerous factors, and certainly innate skill and programming practice come into play. But I think that only gets yo…

Nor have I, but I did work with someone who was regarded as such at a company I worked for. He got the reputation for shipping features fast, but everything he did was quick and dirty. This lead to some resentment with other developers tasked with extending the new features he shipped - invariably the simple extension to the feature would take longer than the original feature. Instead of indicating that everything this guy ships is a nightmare to work with, it further cemented the notion that this guy was a 10xer.
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