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Another Theory to Explain 10X Programmers

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Re: Another Theory to Explain 10X Programmers

#51

Post by VLM »

alkonaut wrote: post #29

A sports analogy appeared in yesterday's HN thread on this topic: the difference between an average runner and the fastest man alive is less than 50%. The counter argument here is that the measurable variable here isn't really the skill of the programmer but the success of the company (or equivalent). You only have to be best by a small margin to win. If you count wins between me and Usain Bolt he would be more than…

In the spirit of providing reasonably good analogies, there's a game some people play where given a programming language the scissors are unleashed and a statement or construct disappears from the language temporarily and now the players try to implement "whatever" in the now slightly neutered language. The general spirit of ... write me a fizzbuzz without the mod operator or a function reimplementing mod.

Now there's plenty of space for jokes like do this to C++ and that language is so fat most people won't notice if a random component disappears. Or do this to PDP-8 assembly language or a turing tarpit and the language is so small that one component removal might make it no longer turing complete, maybe impossible to complete the challenge. But generally speaking, yeah, remove a big part or enough small parts and you'll take a 10x performance hit, sure.

Now there's "know" and then there's kyu/dan ranks from go. Too much binary thinking means people who have a correctly applied checkbox don't really know what they're doing, or maybe they do. Thats why its hard to predict.

Re: Another Theory to Explain 10X Programmers

#52

Post by pjc50 »

tomp wrote: post #28
TeMPOraL wrote: post #24

I like this theory, seems to fit my experience and intuition much more than the "innate ability" kinds. But then again, I'm a weird kind of programmer. I'm a 10X+ programmer when working on my own stuff, or some challenge, basically for fun. Start paying me or expecting me to deliver, and my productivity drops to 0.1X. I've been unsuccessfully trying to figure that out for years and fix my work productivity, with lit…

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).

Anything to do with crypto is a "10x problem", or at least a "careful specialists only" problem.

Re: Another Theory to Explain 10X Programmers

#53

Post by zimbatm »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #24

I like this theory, seems to fit my experience and intuition much more than the "innate ability" kinds. But then again, I'm a weird kind of programmer. I'm a 10X+ programmer when working on my own stuff, or some challenge, basically for fun. Start paying me or expecting me to deliver, and my productivity drops to 0.1X. I've been unsuccessfully trying to figure that out for years and fix my work productivity, with lit…

It might be related to procrastination.

If you feel that the time where you're working on something that doesn't interest you is time where you could be doing something better your brain will feel mentally painful. That blocks your mental faculties and might induce you to seek for doing other activities (like being here on HN).

One technique to rewire the brain is to do time-bounded periods of work with a reward at the end. It's a bit like a work-up. Look for pomodoro technique.

See: https://class.coursera.org/learning-003/lecture/19

Re: Another Theory to Explain 10X Programmers

#54

Post by FLUX-YOU »

olavgg wrote: post #18
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, 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 month after me is already 2x what I am in LOC/fix time. (I know, I know, LOC is a poor metric)

This and "if you read books, you're already way ahead of the pack" or similar statements are just feel-good statements. It's very clear that the other guy and the two original team members are way more productive than I am despite me trying to hit all of the recommended reading books and reading HN/subreddits/blogs/etc.

You can read HN/books/stack overflow and be really good as long as you take advantage of the information and actually practice it in the real world. But until you go and actually measure real things like LOC/fix time/projects completed, the signals "reading HN/books/whatever" are just cultural signals.

Re: Another Theory to Explain 10X Programmers

#55

Post by hga »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #41
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 don't believe in innate talent. I totally believe in innate talent. There are standard breakpoints in math teaching where people simply don't get it. No matter how much time you spend explaining it to them, their brains aren't wired up to handle certain levels of abstraction. At best they remember it briefly, but it never sticks. (The breakpoints are roughly at basic 'manipulate equations to find x' algebra, basi…

Issac Asimov famously hit a "breakpoint" at integral calculus.

I myself remember "sweating blood" to get definite integration; unfortunately never got a chance to do multiple dimensions.

Or take organic chemistry. I have a particular type of memory inherited from my paternal grandmother, anything I can fit into an organization of related things I retain well. And I have really really good 3D visualization. First term organic chemistry was easy, and I didn't have to use physical models more complicated than my fingers and knuckles. It's well known that at minimum this is a lot harder for a lot of people. Heck, it's an appropriate weed out class for premeds, appropriate in that it tests both of those capabilities which will later be needed to learn medicine.

Re: Another Theory to Explain 10X Programmers

#56

Post by normloman »

Why are we debating whether some programmers are better than others? Of course some are. What we should be asking is whether hiring 10X programmers is worth it.

Today it seems every open position requires a "rockstar" developer, even for simple work. The demand for "rockstars" is so great, CEOs of tech companies complain of talent shortages, and companies resort to talent sniping. I suspect most programming jobs could be done well by an average programmer, thus ending the so-called shortage of good programmers and giving inexperienced developers the chance to further their skills on the job.

Re: Another Theory to Explain 10X Programmers

#57

Post by raverbashing »

bluedino wrote: post #37
alkonaut wrote: post #29

A sports analogy appeared in yesterday's HN thread on this topic: the difference between an average runner and the fastest man alive is less than 50%. The counter argument here is that the measurable variable here isn't really the skill of the programmer but the success of the company (or equivalent). You only have to be best by a small margin to win. If you count wins between me and Usain Bolt he would be more than…

>> the difference between an average runner and the fastest man alive is less than 50%. So that means the average man can run the 100m in 15 seconds? It's a much better comparison to stretch that distance out. How fast (slow?) does your average human take to complete a marathon?

I think it's an ok comparison but remember this is not a normal distribution (I'm not sure what's the actual distribution)

How many people do it in less than 10s?

A lot of people probably do it in more than 20s

Re: Another Theory to Explain 10X Programmers

#58

Post by lifeisstillgood »

I am dubious about the 10x theory as a whole.

It's really 10 times of what? Productivity? Value delivered to company?

A developer who convinces the CEO that the million dollar project to put in is a bit silly and you could just use a simple web framework on the cloud is worth 10x in value to the company all the other developers who would have happily built crazy idea for them.

Even if the consultants are all "rockstars" and the in house does php.

So I think that being always context specific (ie in this case I need memcheck, in the other case I don't use C at all so it is a useless skill) is too deep.

There are a set of skills called professionalism that mark a 10x developer

- the ethics of selling profitable services that are not in the best interests of the client

- the investment and training to remain upto date with the common best practises

- contribution back to the global corpus of knowledge on common best practises

I think that as a profession we need to work on building and encouraging all members to reach such standards.

Re: Another Theory to Explain 10X Programmers

#59

Post by mrbig4545 »

in my opinion, it's all about time and motivation. I have neither, therefore i'm not a 10x programmer. but if i did, i could churn stuff out no worries.

but instead of that i spend a lot of time procrastinating and working like a 1x programmer in 1/10th of the time.

Re: Another Theory to Explain 10X Programmers

#60

Post by TeMPOraL »

zimbatm wrote: post #53
TeMPOraL wrote: post #24

I like this theory, seems to fit my experience and intuition much more than the "innate ability" kinds. But then again, I'm a weird kind of programmer. I'm a 10X+ programmer when working on my own stuff, or some challenge, basically for fun. Start paying me or expecting me to deliver, and my productivity drops to 0.1X. I've been unsuccessfully trying to figure that out for years and fix my work productivity, with lit…

It might be related to procrastination. If you feel that the time where you're working on something that doesn't interest you is time where you could be doing something better your brain will feel mentally painful. That blocks your mental faculties and might induce you to seek for doing other activities (like being here on HN). One technique to rewire the brain is to do time-bounded periods of work with a reward at t…

It's definitely related to procrastination; it's not while doing hobby projects I hang out on HN as much as I do ;).

I tried Pomodoro many times, with various results. Mostly I just can't stick to it for longer than two-three days at a time. Depending on forcing myself to productivity induces big mental pain and/or tons of anxiety.

Thanks for the link.

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