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Another Theory to Explain 10X Programmers

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Re: Another Theory to Explain 10X Programmers

#11

Post by qznc »

gedrap wrote: post #2

The whole 10X thing (which sounds like some superhero myth or whatever) is much simpler then we sometimes want to believe. The work we do is not that unique. While often it will not be identical, but will share a lot in common. We learn what worked in the past in similar situation, and apply it successfully in the future. That's it. Bottom line, experience matters a lot.

If experience is all that matters than the industry could be a lot better if we would not let the 40+ software developers disappear to management. Instead they should get payed better to keep them?

Re: Another Theory to Explain 10X Programmers

#12

Post by spacecowboy_lon »

sp4ke wrote: post #5

Completely agree on this. I don't believe in innate talent. I believe we are all born with the same willpower to acquire knowledge. Some people will be ok with not mastering any specific skill as long as it does the job. Others who are "passionate" about certain fields or skills will try to learn as much as possible. So "passion" is a better word to define people's skills. I'm in the latter category, many people ask…

Not sure I agree I am dyslexic and I simply do not have all the inate skills that non disabled peopel have eg I have to work hard to spell of "of" and not "ov"

But on the gripping hand I had a reading age of 18 or so at 10 - Average for population is 13 :-)

Re: Another Theory to Explain 10X Programmers

#13

Post by danieltillett »

Do we really know what the average programmer actually produces? We are all biased when deciding what is average as we use those around us to decide what is average - if we are surrounded by great programmers then our average is much higher than if we are surrounded by poor programmers.

The other complication is the intellectual energy hurdle that each problem brings. Some problems can only be solved by a small percentage of programmers, while others can be solved by anyone who can fog a mirror. How do we measure difference between programmers when the complexity of problems vary so much?

Re: Another Theory to Explain 10X Programmers

#15

Post by DrJokepu »

gedrap wrote: post #2

The whole 10X thing (which sounds like some superhero myth or whatever) is much simpler then we sometimes want to believe. The work we do is not that unique. While often it will not be identical, but will share a lot in common. We learn what worked in the past in similar situation, and apply it successfully in the future. That's it. Bottom line, experience matters a lot.

That being said, some people appear to be better at recognising their (or other people's) past mistakes and learn from them than others. Some people just never learn.

Re: Another Theory to Explain 10X Programmers

#16

Post by 7952 »

devanti wrote: post #3

There are 10X programmers. I'll give an example. If you take an average programmer and "the best of the best" and ask them to build a relatively complex iOS app, of which neither has previous iOS experience, the best programmers WILL finish the task up to 10x faster than the average. This is because the average programmer gets stuck on bugs, solving problems, complexity, and is slower at learning new things. The bett…

Maybe these 10X programmers can quickly solve bugs and problems because they have faced similar issues before and spent the time nesseccary to understand the problem. In that case the important lesson is to limit the amount of novelty in your work so that you are mostly building on technologies you understand well.

Re: Another Theory to Explain 10X Programmers

#17

Post by antjanus »

marktangotango wrote: post #6

I fell into a role once that was unquely tailored to my experience. To paraphrase, I spent years studying and playing with parsing technologies, and parsing legacy languages for static analysis (these were my side projects). I took a job that required a lot of screen scraping (not really but close) at which I excelled. Blew everyone away when I turned around a project in two weeks. The same type of project took their…

Yep, I've had that happen in a past. And the only reason I was able to tackle that "one problem no other developer could fix" was because I had already tackled it numerous times freelancing. In that case, I was almost a 100x developer.

Re: Another Theory to Explain 10X Programmers

#18

Post by olavgg »

devanti wrote: post #3

There are 10X programmers. I'll give an example. If you take an average programmer and "the best of the best" and ask them to build a relatively complex iOS app, of which neither has previous iOS experience, the best programmers WILL finish the task up to 10x faster than the average. This is because the average programmer gets stuck on bugs, solving problems, complexity, and is slower at learning new things. The bett…

Actually I believe almost everyone who is reading hacker news is a 10x programmer. It's really quite simple, the average IT person, especially in "enterprise" has very limited knowledge, but they do know some programming. Either in Cobol, Basic, ASP or Excel. Their job is to solve problems, but they're not really interested in their work. A job is a job, not a hobby. They have never heard about system automation, still thinks Linux is evil and a bedroom project and believes VMWare is a coming revolution for system administration, which they're gonna start to use soon.

Re: Another Theory to Explain 10X Programmers

#19

Post by kubiiii »

devanti wrote: post #3

There are 10X programmers. I'll give an example. If you take an average programmer and "the best of the best" and ask them to build a relatively complex iOS app, of which neither has previous iOS experience, the best programmers WILL finish the task up to 10x faster than the average. This is because the average programmer gets stuck on bugs, solving problems, complexity, and is slower at learning new things. The bett…

If you give the average programmer a problem that is impossible for him to solve, the best of the best will appear as a infiniteX programmer.

Re: Another Theory to Explain 10X Programmers

#20

Post by adekok »

illumen wrote: post #9
sp4ke wrote: post #5

Completely agree on this. I don't believe in innate talent. I believe we are all born with the same willpower to acquire knowledge. Some people will be ok with not mastering any specific skill as long as it does the job. Others who are "passionate" about certain fields or skills will try to learn as much as possible. So "passion" is a better word to define people's skills. I'm in the latter category, many people ask…

Over 12 years, if you study & practice an extra 2 hours per day you will have studied the equivalent of 365 days for 24 hours per day, or 1095 days at 8 hours per day. That's about a whole bachelors degree worth of study. That's not even including normal work study and practice. Now, if you get 10 fresh out of school people who also did not study growing up VS someone who has been doing this for 12 years, and who was…

> Completely agree on this. I don't believe in innate talent.

A little critical thinking shows there must be innate talent.

Most human abilities / behaviors / properties vary around a central mean. Some people are short, some are tall. Some are smart, some... less so. Some are naturally good at something, others are naturally bad at it.

As an anecdotal data point, my daughter could stand on my outstretched hand pretty much from the time she could stand. The first time I tried it (over a king sized bed), she did it without any problems or concerns. No other kid I've met could do the same.

That's an innate talent.

The "10,000 hours" idea is also a myth.

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20121114-gladwells-10000-hou...

Practice helps, but you soon reach a limit set by your genetics. And some people are likely to have genetics better suited to the problem at hand.

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