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As I've written before [1], I find it confusing that some people believe "10x" or "rockstar developers" are a myth. Are star athletes, artists, writers, and, uh

As I've written before [1], I find it confusing that some people believe "10x" or "rockstar developers" are a myth. Are star athletes, artists, writers, and, uh, rock stars, a myth? Why would the programming profession be the only one where there are no major differences in performance? [1] http://www.ybrikman.com/writing/2013/09/29/the-10x-developer-is-not-myth/ http://www.ybrikman.com/writing/2013/09/29/the-10x-developer...

mattmanser 11y ago
There are a couple of hundred 10x footballers or artists or writers or what ever compared to.the millions of people who try to do it. Somehow there are 10s of thousands of people who think they are 10x engineers or have somehow hired a 10x engineer. That's why they aren't actually all these 10x engineers people talk about.
- dxhdr 11y ago
  Okay, here's an extremely unscientific rebuttal to your sports analogy. There are 13,700 professional athletes in the United States [0], compared to 670,000 amateur athletes in the Amateur Athletic Union [1] (there are surely many more outside of that particular group but let's go with it). That gives us a 2% rate of 10x athleticism. Let's assume that 10x engineers occur at the same rate as athletic exceptionalism (yes, that's silly but why not). According to another questionable statistic, there were 1,114,000 software developers in the US in 2014 [2]. Now we've already established that outstanding engineers occur at the same rate as professional atheletes. What does that give us? Tens of thousands of professional 10x engineers. [0] http://www.bls.gov/ooh/entertainment-and-sports/athletes-and-sports-competitors.htm http://www.bls.gov/ooh/entertainment-and-sports/athletes-and... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateur_Athletic_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateur_Athletic_Union [2] http://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/software-developers.htm http://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/s...
- brikis98 11y ago
  Of course superstars are rare. But rare is not the same thing as "don't exist". And of course people will claim to be superstars even when they are not. But that, again, doesn't mean they don't exist. The very last two paragraphs of my blog post: > It’s important to put things into perspective. Star programmers, athletes, writers, and scientists are exceedingly rare. I wouldn’t recommend building a hiring strategy around solely hiring “rock stars”; you’ll end up looking foolish and lonely. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good: hire the best engineers you can get and give them ample opportunity to develop and get even better. > However, don’t fall into the fallacy that all programmers are created equal. There is a vast spectrum of ability in any creative profession. On one end are the type of hires that can sink an organization, actively increasing tech debt with every line of code they write. On the other, there are people who can write code that changes what is possible and have an impact that is an order of magnitude greater than the average.

mattmanser 11y ago

There are a couple of hundred 10x footballers or artists or writers or what ever compared to.the millions of people who try to do it. Somehow there are 10s of thousands of people who think they are 10x engineers or have somehow hired a 10x engineer. That's why they aren't actually all these 10x engineers people talk about.

dxhdr 11y ago
Okay, here's an extremely unscientific rebuttal to your sports analogy. There are 13,700 professional athletes in the United States [0], compared to 670,000 amateur athletes in the Amateur Athletic Union [1] (there are surely many more outside of that particular group but let's go with it). That gives us a 2% rate of 10x athleticism. Let's assume that 10x engineers occur at the same rate as athletic exceptionalism (yes, that's silly but why not). According to another questionable statistic, there were 1,114,000 software developers in the US in 2014 [2]. Now we've already established that outstanding engineers occur at the same rate as professional atheletes. What does that give us? Tens of thousands of professional 10x engineers. [0] http://www.bls.gov/ooh/entertainment-and-sports/athletes-and-sports-competitors.htm http://www.bls.gov/ooh/entertainment-and-sports/athletes-and... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateur_Athletic_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateur_Athletic_Union [2] http://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/software-developers.htm http://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/s...
brikis98 11y ago
Of course superstars are rare. But rare is not the same thing as "don't exist". And of course people will claim to be superstars even when they are not. But that, again, doesn't mean they don't exist. The very last two paragraphs of my blog post: > It’s important to put things into perspective. Star programmers, athletes, writers, and scientists are exceedingly rare. I wouldn’t recommend building a hiring strategy around solely hiring “rock stars”; you’ll end up looking foolish and lonely. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good: hire the best engineers you can get and give them ample opportunity to develop and get even better. > However, don’t fall into the fallacy that all programmers are created equal. There is a vast spectrum of ability in any creative profession. On one end are the type of hires that can sink an organization, actively increasing tech debt with every line of code they write. On the other, there are people who can write code that changes what is possible and have an impact that is an order of magnitude greater than the average.