The 10x programmer is a myth perpetuated by senior management to get compliant submission from naive young code monkeys. End of discussion.
Qualities that I believe make the most difference in programmers’ productivity
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Re: Qualities that I believe make the most difference in programmers’ productivity
#22>The programming community is extremely polarized about the existence or not of such a beast
If we go meta and generalize the disagreement, the skepticism about "10X" is the same as the rejection of other labels such as "ninja" and "rockstar".[1] For some, the idea of categorizing a subset of programmers with a grandiose label is psychologically distasteful. It doesn't matter what the label is; any label that attempts to stratify programmers is a "myth".
As for "10x" specifically, I'll repeat what I've written before...
To make peace with the "10x" label, I suggest people just think of it as a rhetorical figure-of-speech instead of a rigorous mathematical term. We don't get hung up when people say "Star Wars IV was 10 times better than Phantom Menace" or "I'm not even 1/2 the football player I used to be."
Even if people were to use a new term such as "3-Sigma Programmer"[2] instead of "10X Programmer", the ensuing debates would still be the same.
E.g. "Some people say 3-σ programmers write string parsing loops that are better in speed and quality than 99.7% of the other loops but that 3-standard-deviations-above-the-mean is a myth... etc"
The argument pattern would be the same: take a label, any label, hyperfocus on some literal meaning to the exclusion of all other colloquial usage, and debate why that mathematical interpretation fails in the real world.
tldr: "10x" in discussions is more of an informal ranking of programmer ability and not a rigorous mathematical measurement of output.
[1]https://www.hanselman.com/blog/TheMythOfTheRockstarProgramme...
Re: Qualities that I believe make the most difference in programmers’ productivity
#23To me programmer that knows devops is the 10x programmer in the right company.
Re: Qualities that I believe make the most difference in programmers’ productivity
#24Taking myself as a 0.5x programmer, I have sadly encountered some 0.01x programmers. In fact it might be better to characterize them as -0.01x programmers, who I believe can work indefinitely without ever producing a working piece of software. Usually the best indicator of this is when the initial snaglist for a piece of work grows after the snags have been "completed". Then each round of fixes becomes a kind of Hydra and finally we have to give up cutting off heads and start over.
I resisted believing in this phenomenon for a long time, especially because I'm no great shakes myself. But in the end it could no longer be rationally denied.
Re: Qualities that I believe make the most difference in programmers’ productivity
#25I think the significantly better performer is something we see in all areas like sport, music and craft.
I think Anders Ericsson does a good job of explaining the phenomenon in his book Peak: http://uk.businessinsider.com/anders-ericsson-how-to-become-...
What we should be doing is looking to create companies that can allow workers to reach and sustain peak performance in all areas, not just coding.
Re: Qualities that I believe make the most difference in programmers’ productivity
#26I've worked with people who could be classed as almost a 10x programmer. Their code worked, but it was also incomprehensible to everyone else on the team. I have found that high-speed programmers tend to develop a very personalised workflow style. They do things their way, they code their way and forget that other people may have to maintain that code.
The argument in the above post would not classify those as 10x programmers. antirez is claiming that high quality design and a commitment to simplicity is a big part of what makes some programmers do much more productive.
Re: Qualities that I believe make the most difference in programmers’ productivity
#27I am the mythical 1/10x programmer. Sadly currently not available for hire. :)
Re: Qualities that I believe make the most difference in programmers’ productivity
#28I've worked with people who could be classed as almost a 10x programmer. Their code worked, but it was also incomprehensible to everyone else on the team. I have found that high-speed programmers tend to develop a very personalised workflow style. They do things their way, they code their way and forget that other people may have to maintain that code.
I've worked with some too and they've always needed another 10 junior engineers to clean-up and thoroughly test their code later on. In some big corps, that might not be such a bad thing. If it weren't for them, most projects would be stuck in so called "design-meetings" forever.
Re: Qualities that I believe make the most difference in programmers’ productivity
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
The writer is a non-native English speaker.
Kudos if that's the case. An essay on soft skills is probably the most difficult genre to master for a non-native speaker, more so for a programmer. I'm ok with the piece, as long as there was effort involved and it's better than Google Translate.
I've been reading antirez's writing for a long time and he's been consistently getting stronger as a writer of English. I think this is some of his best writing yet in terms of grammar and use of the language.
Re: Qualities that I believe make the most difference in programmers’ productivity
#30The 10x/-10x decisions are made by the architects, and the decisions tend to involve where network/codebase/layer/service boundaries are drawn.