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The Myth of the Rockstar Programmer

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Re: The Myth of the Rockstar Programmer

#81

Post by dspeyer »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #6
benjaminwootton wrote: post #4

He's empirically wrong because I've worked with 10x developers. A few years ago I worked with a guy there whose output, productivity, and smart solutions combined with godlike C++ coding ability made him probably 100x more effective than anyone else in the place. This was in the front office at Goldman Sachs, so the rest of us weren't completely useless. He was just in a different league though. I have also worked wi…

> He's empirically wrong because I've worked with 10x developers. I believe you meant "He's anecdotally wrong because I've worked with 10x developers." To be empirically wrong, you'd have to contradict it with some empirical rather than anecdotal evidence.

If you're looking for a replicated controlled study, there's been something close:

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/HighNotes.html

Re: The Myth of the Rockstar Programmer

#82

Post by shanselman »

tanzam75 wrote: post #74
d23 wrote: post #48

> Reality is a normal distribution curve. Lots of good average senior developers, some amazing outliers and some junior folks with potential. (and some folks that suck.) Strange, but this doesn't seem to be the case for me, or at least the people that I've had to interview and work with. I've run into far too many developers who have no business installing apache much less making anything of use for a client. I don't…

> As a sidenote, I find this obnoxious: > "I hate Quora, so I'll just steal their content and post it here." It's not Quora's content. Quora's TOS explicitly states that users retain ownership over their contributions. Quora only gets a non-exclusive license. Scott Hanselman works for Microsoft. Nade Waddoups works for Microsoft, wrote an internal document at Microsoft, and then posted part of it to Quora as an answe…

That's a little complex of an explanation. I could still argue fair use. Regardless, it's a coincidence that this guy works for MSFT. I don't know him. I just stumbled on the Quora post.

The link from my post also explains why Quora is evil, I'm detail, FWIW.

Re: The Myth of the Rockstar Programmer

#83

Post by adamconroy »

The 10x programmer myth is all about relativity. I suggest there are no 10x programmers, only -10x programmers which make the normal ones look really good.

And people who say that 10x programmers do exist because they have worked with one, are in fact themselves the -10x guy.

Re: The Myth of the Rockstar Programmer

#84

Post by memracom »

"In fact, it's diversity of thought and experience in a team that makes a Rockstar Team" -- this, a million times this. You don't get rockstar results without deep thought and questioning everything. The most efficient way to do this, and the easiest way to create this in your company, is to build a diverse team.

I believe that this is the real secret behind Google.

Re: The Myth of the Rockstar Programmer

#85

Post by memracom »

bulatb wrote: post #36
SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No programmer is worth more than any other I don't think that's what's being said. IMHO the message is: - No programmer is worth 10x the average. (though some might be worth 1/10 * the average). - A high-functioning team is more important than a high-functioning individual, and these two are sometimes at odds if you give free rein to the "individualist ideologies". Both are debatable and IMHO are often true, but "N…

In the observation that kicked off the meme, a 10x engineer was someone who was 10x more productive than the least productive members of the team, not 10x more productive than the average.

That is a rigged comparison but too often that matches reality. Everyone in the team works on massive Big Balls Of Mud in C#, ASP.NET. One guy in the team builds a new app in Python with Django in one tenth the time it would take to do it in C#/ASP.NET. Is this guy a rock star? Or is this a symptom of a toxic IT environment created by incompetent management who simply have no concept of "accidental complexity" and "technical debt".

So many enterprise IT shops are effectively bankrupt due to technical debt and the only thing propping them up is the cash influx of the enterprise that owns them. This affects J2EE shops just as much as .NET ones.

And the multicore future, end of Moore's law, has effectively made all of their software, both built software and purchased software, obsolete. It is not a pretty picture, but we will see this all play out over the next few years. That is far more important than chasing after the fantasy of the 10x white knight who will save you.

Re: The Myth of the Rockstar Programmer

#86

Post by pstack »

The most important reason we have to insist on the "rockstar programmer" being a myth is that it takes attention away from the CEO that wants to be the rockstar. Rockstars also have more leverage, which chaffs the suits who want you to be just another drone that they can shuffle around like an office chair.

Re: The Myth of the Rockstar Programmer

#87

Post by dennisgorelik »

ef4 wrote: post #58

The author is exactly backwards on the issue of team scaling. Even if I grant his premise that 10x engineers don't exist (which I don't), let's just presume 2x engineers exist. So is a team of four 2x engineers equivalent to a team of 8 1x engineers? No -- the smaller team is vastly more effective, because of the n^2 communication problem. This is why strong individual performers are so valuable. Give me my top pick…

"n!" communication problem, not just "n^2".

Re: The Myth of the Rockstar Programmer

#88

Post by wslh »

yogo wrote: post #72
wslh wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I see a developer that can work on a complex product alone in short time and almost no bugs, well this a developer in the 10X league.

Sure, if the idea is to make the 10 in 10 x meaningless. My point was that saying something is 10X implies that it is quantifiable. That developer can be assumed to be above average but you don't know that he's 10x. Maybe he worked in the same domain for a long time or did exactly the same work before. I agree that if someone works in the same domain for a long time eventually they will be an expert but as a develope…

I agree. Now I am following you.

The discussion about what a 10x developer means is really interesting: specialization and long time commitment to specific fields pays a very important part. I don't think you can be a 10X developer in an unrelated specialty. We can compare this with experiments about chess masters playing a new game with modified rules, they are not masters anymore.

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