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There are no 10x developers, but there are 1/10 ones

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Re: There are no 10x developers, but there are 1/10 ones

#151

Post by rachelbythebay »

Jabbles wrote: post #117
rachelbythebay wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, yeah, that's why I said tickets aren't fungible. Still, when you have someone hopping on them as quickly as they're opened while someone else just grabs one every hour or two, something is wrong. What if I told you the "one every hour or two" person was doing the dumbest, simplest ones, while the top tech was doing the hardest ones (in addition to everything else)? It happened.

What was the distribution of remuneration?

I never had that kind of data, unfortunately.

Re: There are no 10x developers, but there are 1/10 ones

#152

Post by krapp »

rhizome wrote: post #140
krapp wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps, but then our 6x or whatever factor would still mean essentially same thing.

Think of how much better programmers would be if they were being measured in base20, though. "There are no 20x programmers, but there are 1/20 programmers!"

That would make me automatically twice as good as I am now!

Now I just need to find a surgeon with questionable morals...

Re: There are no 10x developers, but there are 1/10 ones

#153

Post by igouy »

jdlshore wrote: post #148
igouy wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you read those references? Or are you just quoting Laurent Bossavit blindly?

I've read and understood the reference I've provided (Bossavit), and I've also read and understood the reference justin_vanw provided (McConnell), so no, I'm not quoting Bossavit blindly . After reading both, I found Bossavit much more convincing. In addition to meticulously following the chains of references back to the original research, Bossavit also examines how science is done and what is required in order for a…

> so no, I'm not quoting Bossavit blindly

As far as McConnell; as for the other references, aren't you taking Bossavit's claims on trust?

Re: There are no 10x developers, but there are 1/10 ones

#154

Post by waps »

sliverstorm wrote: post #84
reeses wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depending on what you mean by the average developer, 1000x is plausible. If you think in terms of reliability, it's the difference between a four nines engineer and a one nine. That guy who pushes untested code that brings the site down for a day vs. the woman who has to roll back her code once in five years because she made a fencepost error is an example of how such variances in developer "productivity" can be meas…

I'm skeptical that any engineer can independently be responsible for four nines. HA is a big-picture deal. One engineer can break it, but one engineer can't make it. Put differently, a good HA organization does not need 1000x engineers- a good system ensures even garden variety engineers will deliver. There are lenses through which you can look and say "Engineer A was 1000x as productive as Engineer B", but those len…

"a good system ensures even garden variety engineers will deliver."

I assume this points to the idea that test procedures can replace individual expertise ? My experience is that testing systems get bypassed by "garden variety" engineers (mostly with PM/Manager support), usually in exactly the cases where you wouldn't want them to do that.

Even when this is not the case, tests, no matter the coverage, don't cover everything. The 100% test coverage demands that are in vogue these days make sure tests are usually written specifically to minimize interactions between pieces of code, which is of course exactly what a good engineer would test for.

Of course with tests testing interaction, there are pieces of code (the ones that worry me) that get tested 1000x (in one case literally iterating over all possible calls and verifying constraints afterwards, almost fuzzing), and there's pieces of code that just don't get attention (usually an if out_of_range check at the beginning of functions, since I would just test for the same range, with potentially the same mistake in both the used number and the tested number, but other things happen too. If the consequences of the function screwing up is a slight UI aberration ... well I barely test UI code at all, really. MVC for the app MC for the tests). Also there's pieces of code where I know they're potentially not thread safe and so, just to make sure big screwups get caught, I test firing off the same test 1000x in parallel. If the function works entirely based of the stack and return values, no such test is done.

Re: There are no 10x developers, but there are 1/10 ones

#155

Post by igouy »

jdlshore wrote: post #148
igouy wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you read those references? Or are you just quoting Laurent Bossavit blindly?

I've read and understood the reference I've provided (Bossavit), and I've also read and understood the reference justin_vanw provided (McConnell), so no, I'm not quoting Bossavit blindly . After reading both, I found Bossavit much more convincing. In addition to meticulously following the chains of references back to the original research, Bossavit also examines how science is done and what is required in order for a…

> There's much more to Bossavit's research than my quotes here, so if you disagree, please read and rebut his work directly, not just these quotes.

Please provide a copy of Bossavit's research.

Re: There are no 10x developers, but there are 1/10 ones

#156

Post by jqjester »

igouy wrote: post #153
jdlshore wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've read and understood the reference I've provided (Bossavit), and I've also read and understood the reference justin_vanw provided (McConnell), so no, I'm not quoting Bossavit blindly . After reading both, I found Bossavit much more convincing. In addition to meticulously following the chains of references back to the original research, Bossavit also examines how science is done and what is required in order for a…

> so no, I'm not quoting Bossavit blindly As far as McConnell; as for the other references, aren't you taking Bossavit's claims on trust?

Steve McConnell himself doesn't dispute Bossavit's claims about the earlier studies (for the most part), he just disagrees about the significance of those claims. See McConnell's rebuttal in which he acknowledges the methodological weaknesses of the citations: http://www.construx.com/10x_Software_Development/Origins_of_... .

Re: There are no 10x developers, but there are 1/10 ones

#157

Post by wildwood »

flyt wrote: post #45
NateDad wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife worked with a guy who closed a ticket about closing tickets. If you're measured purely on the basis of number of tickets closed, you can game the system. Replaced users mouse, ticket closed. Or, upgraded network software on 300 machines, ticket closed. If someone is doing twice as many tickets as the next guy, I'd assume he is doing a lot of BS work, not that he's twice as fast.

Don't forget: open 300 tickets, one for each machine.

And also be sure to be "that guy" who insists that every single request be made into a ticket, instead of handling simple walk-ups informally.

Re: There are no 10x developers, but there are 1/10 ones

#158

Post by reeses »

waps wrote: post #154
sliverstorm wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm skeptical that any engineer can independently be responsible for four nines. HA is a big-picture deal. One engineer can break it, but one engineer can't make it. Put differently, a good HA organization does not need 1000x engineers- a good system ensures even garden variety engineers will deliver. There are lenses through which you can look and say "Engineer A was 1000x as productive as Engineer B", but those len…

"a good system ensures even garden variety engineers will deliver." I assume this points to the idea that test procedures can replace individual expertise ? My experience is that testing systems get bypassed by "garden variety" engineers (mostly with PM/Manager support), usually in exactly the cases where you wouldn't want them to do that. Even when this is not the case, tests, no matter the coverage, don't cover eve…

Good points.

Most requirements do not include error or exception handling requirements, so when developers write their test cases (in the very few cases when they do so), they usually do not write negative test cases.

Obviously, NFRs need to cover those, but in many organizations, they're seen as being "in the way of getting work done," just like comprehensive automated tests.

Re: There are no 10x developers, but there are 1/10 ones

#159

Post by gruseom »

papsosouid wrote: post #143
jdlshore wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've read Peopleware. Your mention of it is another example of the uncritical citation of references that Bossavit talks about in his book. Peopleware isn't a scientific study. It's a collection of essays and opinions by two authors I have a great deal of respect for. The closest it gets to science is an un-sourced discussion of DeMarco and Lister's "Coding War Games." In that discussion, it specifically says that di…

>Your reference of it is another example of the uncritical waving of references that Bossavit talks about in his book. He says, while uncritically waving a single reference that has no backing evidence. You seriously don't see your hypocrisy here? >Peopleware isn't a scientific study Duh? That is why it contains citations, to the studies the authors conducted. You sure did a poor job of reading it if you are actually…

Whoa there. You are being way too rude and aggressive about this. Please help keep HN civil; that's much more important than any argument.

Peopleware is a classic, or at least many software professionals regard it that way, but it is a classic of folklore rather than science. Here is an example that I asked one of the authors about years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=1995716.

The research literature itself on these matters is extremely flimsy. There is not even any empirical evidence for the stuff we all agree on, such as that version control is good (http://www.neverworkintheory.org/?p=451) let alone on the controversial points such as productivity. Incidentally, how do you measure productivity?

I'd be happy to be wrong about this, though. Perhaps you could cite a study or two that really does hold up to scrutiny?

Re: There are no 10x developers, but there are 1/10 ones

#160

Post by igouy »

jqjester wrote: post #156
igouy wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> so no, I'm not quoting Bossavit blindly As far as McConnell; as for the other references, aren't you taking Bossavit's claims on trust?

Steve McConnell himself doesn't dispute Bossavit's claims about the earlier studies (for the most part), he just disagrees about the significance of those claims. See McConnell's rebuttal in which he acknowledges the methodological weaknesses of the citations: http://www.construx.com/10x_Software_Development/Origins_of_... .

What specifically are you pointing to within that blog post and comment stream? (Let's make sure I look at exactly what you mean me to see.)
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