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Another Theory to Explain 10X Programmers

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Re: Another Theory to Explain 10X Programmers

#61

Post by indymike »

FLUX-YOU wrote: post #54
olavgg wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, sti…

I don't agree, if only because I'm the anecdote. I'm trying to pick up Rust and mess around with app/net security, but at my job, I feel like I'm in the middle of the pack. There are instances when I quickly fix stuff but also take forever to find a simple problem. To be fair, we do have a very extensive app with 15 years of code rot and only 2 members of the original team to guide/teach. But a guy that started a mon…

The attitude you have is the one that eventually drives you to be a 10x. If you think you are awesome at what you do, that is when you probably are not.

Re: Another Theory to Explain 10X Programmers

#62

Post by lifeisstillgood »

sheepmullet wrote: post #42

I don't really agree. Consistent 10x programmers learn the skillset required for the job. Often that requires learning about topics that have little relevance in other jobs. Because of that there is little incentive to be a 10x developer. They are paid maybe 1.25x-1.5x average and have to put in 3-4x the effort. For example I am a 10x developer but much of my knowledge is company specific. This means I simply don't h…

Partially. Doing so has made you more valuable to the company involved, and so marked you as more valuable to other companies (something about women finding men attractive that are already with another women - the first woman's rational investment is a signal that the man is worth investing in)

You just need to find ways to signal that investment - perhaps doing talks under the brand of the first company ?

Re: Another Theory to Explain 10X Programmers

#63

Post by normloman »

adekok wrote: post #20
illumen wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 prett…

That's fine but the article you linked to doesn't support genetic limits. Was there a different article you meant to link to?

Re: Another Theory to Explain 10X Programmers

#64

Post by Gigablah »

danieltillett wrote: post #40
adekok wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do we really know what the average programmer actually produces? Industry average is 2,000 lines of code per programmer per year. I've regularly produced 10x to 40x that amount. Others I've talked to have done the same. The difference between "low volume" and "high volume" programmers is usually pretty stark. My experience is that it's not so much experience as problem solving skills. If you have a good understandi…

Wow 2000 lines of code per year - that is around 8 lines a day! I consider myself a very average developer and I would write 20x this. Maybe I am not so average after all :)

I could delete more than that in a week :)

Re: Another Theory to Explain 10X Programmers

#68

Post by jacquesm »

10X programmers are what they are simply because they've already seen a similar problem before. The longer you're at the game, the more exposure you've had the bigger the chance that you'll be 10X as good at something as somebody else.

Personally I don't think the 10X moniker is very useful. Imagine we'd be calling the marathon runners of the world 10X people. They may be a bit better at task 'X' (running a marathon) but they may suck at a variety of other tasks.

In the end it's all the 0.5 to 9.5 programmers that get the bulk of all the work done, and yet, everybody wants to hire only the 10X guys/girls and the not-yet-10X guys/girls are left to feel miserable because they're somehow inadequate.

If you want to go to the opera: practice, practice, practice. And then you too will be a '10X programmer' at some point in your life, the real question is whether or not you'll still enjoy it as much as when you did when everything was new and you were learning all the time.

One thing that I have noticed that makes a huge difference in your abilities: try to not be a single-technology programmer. If you branch out into at least two or three other sub-fields of programming (languages, theory) then you'll become a much better programmer in a hurry.

Re: Another Theory to Explain 10X Programmers

#69

Post by haihaibye »

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…

>> I believe we are all born with the same willpower to acquire knowledge

Evidence seems to show conscientiousness is 50% heritable.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits#H...

Re: Another Theory to Explain 10X Programmers

#70

Post by calibraxis »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #33
tomp wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. I'm assuming there are many 10X programmers; unfortunately, there are not many 10X problems (or at least, not commercially viable ones - for example, I'm developing a programming language, but I don't see any chance of it being a commercial success, so I only do it in my free time).

In my case I doubt it's just about the type of a problem. I feel it's as much about the context. I apologize for the vagueness, those are all results of years of introspection of my work performance. Let's bring up recent web projects I've been doing. I'm working on an API-first system in PHP. Quite a chore, and most of the time I feel like running on 0.1X. Recently I had an opportunity to do a similar, smaller proje…

I wonder if a thoughtful manager can work with that... somehow structure your workplace to not trigger the ugh-obligation phenomenon. (Or at least creep back up to 1X-5X.)
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