The Myth of the Rockstar Programmer
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The Myth of the Rockstar Programmer
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Re: The Myth of the Rockstar Programmer
#2I would have preferred somewhat more content, but the article still had this absolute gem at the end:
> it's diversity of thought and experience in a team that makes a Rockstar Team
People who complement (and cover) one another's skills, are mostly self-directing and are not afraid to ask "stupid" questions - they are incredibly valuable, together more so than as individuals. I've had the joy of working with/in such teams twice in my career. Problems didn't just vanish, they very rarely materialised.
Eventually all good things must end. Projects end, priorities change, people move on and teams get disbanded. The reality check after such a joyful experience can be shocking.
Re: The Myth of the Rockstar Programmer
#3In the same vain I responded to Shanley's post: this is missing one type of engineer that is common in our field:
* Average Engineer - Creates complex problems in response to simple problems...
This is where the desire for rockstars / 10x engineers comes from. One person to clean up the mess made by 10 others.
Re: The Myth of the Rockstar Programmer
#4He'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 with a 10x developer who carried a small company of around 50.
Re: The Myth of the Rockstar Programmer
#5He'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…
I understand where you're coming from -- there are some truly good engineers out there.
But I think he's right too. He's essentially arguing about the true meaning of the metric. Of course there are engineers who can spot bugs at 1/100th the time as an arbitrary engineer. Or fixes things 10x faster (being familiar with the code base certainly helps).
But to have the literal productive capacity of 10 people? That's much different, and that's what he means. Are you capable of replacing 10 arbitrary engineers with the rockstar? No? Then that's not a 10x engineer, by his definition.
Re: The Myth of the Rockstar Programmer
#6He'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.
Re: The Myth of the Rockstar Programmer
#7Allow me to retort: Fabrice Bellard, Linus Torvalds, John Carmack.
Re: The Myth of the Rockstar Programmer
#8He'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.
Anecdotal evidence is empirical evidence. It's just not very convincing because it doesn't come with any information about how common experiences like those are, or what confounding factors might be at play.
Now, in this case, confounding factors probably aren't a problem, but if 10x developers are one in a million or one in a billion, an anecdote about how someone, somewhere actually met one once isn't very helpful to the rest of us.
Re: The Myth of the Rockstar Programmer
#9Allow me to retort: Fabrice Bellard, Linus Torvalds, John Carmack.
Pity...go to any job board, you'll see 50 of them needed on any given day
Those aren't the "rock stars" hiring companies are talking about. They don't need & couldn't afford Linus.
Rock star is just a label they slap onto the job description.
Re: The Myth of the Rockstar Programmer
#10Collaboration overhead. If you replace 10 average programmers with 1 good programmer he doesn't need 10x productivity to match the combined productivity of 10 programmers (which is not a sum). On top of that, programming productivity is also a qualitative measure that goes beyond feature X working correctly. One person can code it in such a way that every time it needs changing it's easy to work with - thus saves uncountable hours in the future.
Not all men are created equal - I don't see why anyone would rail against that. Some people are stronger than you, some people are better coders than you - it's OK. Compare yourself with last year's you instead.