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If he built all the systems and especially the cash cow, isn't that some objective measure that he's more valuable than the average employee? Maybe he's messy,
by MichaelBurge 11y ago
If he built all the systems and especially the cash cow, isn't that some objective measure that he's more valuable than the average employee?
Maybe he's messy, but nobody pays the janitor millions of dollars to clean up everyone else's messes even if they tell themselves he's important. Rather, they pay the people who made it worth cleaning up the building in the first place.
- erichocean 11y agoOne issue some programmers have is discerning that not all code has the same value. I think with code it's harder than with physical things to "know where the value is". It's obvious, for example, that we don't need titanium cupholders in a car, but maybe titanium rods _are_ necessary to achieve a particular level of performance. But in software, you'll see programmers doing the ethical equivalent of putting in titanium cupholders "because it's the best" or whatever, with no regard to the cost. In my experience, a 10x programmer is a 1x programmer who knows where the value is and spends their time on that.
- marktangotango 11y agoAbsolutely, I was attempting to illustrate the difference in perspective, and how subjective '10x' is. My comment above fails in this regard.
- hex13 11y agoNo. It's not creator-janitor thing. It's rather the situation that programmer A makes a huge technical debt, and programmer B must pay him off. It's poor code design, poor code management. It's more like: - irresponsible house developer builds house very fast and very cheaply but he doesn't care about safety or design - then building is beginning to collapse and tennants have to hire another developer to fix mistakes of previous developer. They must pay twice! One time - for creation of the building. Second time - for fixing.