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The Myth of the Myth of the 10x Programmer

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Re: The Myth of the Myth of the 10x Programmer

#51

Post by EduardoBautista »

petilon wrote: post #49

10x programmers do exist. But here's the thing: its not worth being a 10x programmer. Managers don't necessarily want them. First of all, if you complete a project 10x faster than the expected time, managers will assume that they had overestimated the project, as opposed to recognizing that you're a 10x programmer. I have seen this time after time after time. Secondly, if a manager does recognize that you're a 10x pr…

I recommend going into consulting/contracting. A lot of money to be earned if you are really productive.

Re: The Myth of the Myth of the 10x Programmer

#52

Post by 1e-9 »

Harder problem => Increased productivity variance

For extremely hard problems, it's not difficult to measure greater than 10X differences between highly-talented senior developers and the average productivity of those capable of meeting requirements.

Re: The Myth of the Myth of the 10x Programmer

#53

Post by bloody-crow »

I think team sports is a good analogy here. There's no people who are 10x stronger, or who can run 10x faster than their teammates, but there's certainly people who'd score 10x points in certain circumstances than anybody else, and that is what 10x programmer is about.

Re: The Myth of the Myth of the 10x Programmer

#54

Post by zzzeek »

jimbokun wrote: post #42

Here is your 10x programmer: https://norvig.com/sudoku.html "In this essay I tackle the problem of solving every Sudoku puzzle. It turns out to be quite easy (about one page of code for the main idea and two pages for embellishments) using two ideas: constraint propagation and search." If you gave this task to an "average" developer, how long would it take for them to implement? How many lines of code would it be? Wo…

Norvig's work in those questions are more like the 100x developer category.

Re: The Myth of the Myth of the 10x Programmer

#55

Post by t0astbread »

closeparen wrote: post #22
t0astbread wrote: post #18

It doesn't matter whether 10x programmers exist. Programming is not a sport and as such, competition will only lead to narrow thinking, useless optimization and hatred. What we should really strive for is making programming a more creative activity where people learn from and inspire each other, not a competition. Oh and also, "finding the 10x engineer" feels like a hotspot to inject hidden bias into recruiting.

Communication overhead is expensive. All else being equal, it’s much better to build a small elite team that can operate successfully with less structure and process, rather than a large average one.

Right. But you can't build a functioning team that works together and can rely on each other by fostering a culture of competition and hiring only the "predestined" 10x engineers.

If the team culture is to help each other, forgive mistakes and learn from each other without measuring who's the best the team will automatically build itself without the need to hire only "10x engineers".

Or so I suppose. I'm not an HR person or anyone else with expertise in this field so you should take what I say with a grain of salt. I've just been thinking about this a lot as of late.

Re: The Myth of the Myth of the 10x Programmer

#56

Post by saagarjha »

headmelted wrote: post #25
gilbetron wrote: post #10

The concept of the 10x programmer seems to have been drifted from its original meaning. It isn't that there's a coder that is 10x better than a good coder. It is that a lot of people are really bad at their jobs, and a coder that thinks and learns about problems can be far better than those people. It comes from terrible "corporate drone" software developers in the 80s and 90s - the ones that would takes weeks to dev…

Agreed. I've never encountered someone that I think is genuinely a 10x programmer. I've worked with a few people that thought I was one, which I'm most certainly not, and I've explained that to them. I've encountered a lot of what I would call .2x programmers though. As you've said, there are a lot of people that are really bad at the job. It's not a slight either - there are a lot of people doing this job that reall…

> I've never encountered someone that I think is genuinely a 10x programmer.

I have. (Interestingly, some of these people knew this and had a surprising lack of modesty about it as well…) Usually I think it boils down to being able to have the experience to consistently guess right on things, come up with new ideas, and not get tangled in the weeds: most of them are smart, but not so smart that you’re just lost when talking to them.

Re: The Myth of the Myth of the 10x Programmer

#57

Post by steveeq1 »

Nition wrote: post #29
remmargorp64 wrote: post #3

10X programmers DO exist. They aren't just a myth, and they aren't just about knowing when to buy vs build, or when to use a particular framework or toolkit, or how to "mentor" other developers. Chris Sawyer wrote 99% of the code for RollerCoaster Tycoon in x86 assembly language, with the remaining one percent written in C. RollerCoaster Tycoon was a beautiful game which still stands the test of time to this day. The…

Not to diminish the achievement, but worth noting I think that RollerCoaster Tycoon was based on his earlier Transport Tycoon engine, so at least he did get to split the work up between two projects. I have a personal theory the that the average 10x programmer is say 2.5x smarter than average, but also 4x more focused on work, netting a 2.5x4=10x total when you remove all the procrastination and general fumbling arou…

Or he's using better tools and languages. (ie, smalltalk vs javascript)

Re: The Myth of the Myth of the 10x Programmer

#58

Post by emmelaich »

remmargorp64 wrote: post #3

10X programmers DO exist. They aren't just a myth, and they aren't just about knowing when to buy vs build, or when to use a particular framework or toolkit, or how to "mentor" other developers. Chris Sawyer wrote 99% of the code for RollerCoaster Tycoon in x86 assembly language, with the remaining one percent written in C. RollerCoaster Tycoon was a beautiful game which still stands the test of time to this day. The…

I'd say there are 1000x programmers. Easy. [0]

If we change the question to are there 10x programmers within a team in some "average" company with CVs indicating roughly comparable experience, then ...

The answer is still yes, there are 10x programmers. I've witnessed it myself many times. Not so much because the highs are very high, but the lows are very low.

[0] Fabrice Bellard. John Carmack. Linus Torvalds.

Re: The Myth of the Myth of the 10x Programmer

#59

Post by lordofgibbons »

kylec wrote: post #26
paulus_magnus2 wrote: post #13

Can we stop the self hate already? There definitely are 10x musicians, 10x painters, sportsmen and 10x programmers. You know what never exists in 10x form? Burocrats and middle managers who write articles like this one. I suggest to flag this as fake news and all future articles intended to devalue young talented programmers who yet are to discover their true market value.

I'll bet 10x managers do exist, but they quickly become VPs or CEOs

By that reasoning, for all practical purposes, they don't really exist. They were already rare to begin with but then they also move up the ranks quickly.

One could argue VPs and CEOs technically have people reporting to them, but managing people isn't really their job. They are mostly concerned with strategy.

Re: The Myth of the Myth of the 10x Programmer

#60

Post by mjw1007 »

jimbokun wrote: post #42

Here is your 10x programmer: https://norvig.com/sudoku.html "In this essay I tackle the problem of solving every Sudoku puzzle. It turns out to be quite easy (about one page of code for the main idea and two pages for embellishments) using two ideas: constraint propagation and search." If you gave this task to an "average" developer, how long would it take for them to implement? How many lines of code would it be? Wo…

I'm sure Norvig is very good, but I think the sudoku webpage is presenting a finished program in an idealised way, not recording the process he used to write it, false starts and all.

(It seems likely to me that there were some false starts, because eliminate() returns either `values` or False, when both of its callers would be just as happy if it returned True or False.)

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