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> But I can say without a doubt that I have met a small handful of people who are many, many times more productive than ordinary developers. I've met a few dev

> But I can say without a doubt that I have met a small handful of people who are many, many times more productive than ordinary developers. I've met a few developers like this. These developers can get tasks done _faster_ than anyone else, guaranteed. But I have never seen one that can do that _and_ produce quality. Sure, anecdotal, but if you're getting something done considerably faster than others yeah you could just be _better_ than them, but that's unlikely the whole story. You're likely not getting good (if any) tests, good architecture decisions (maintainability), etc. 10x developers may well exist if we're only talking about speed but I have never met one who was a net positive overall (unless we're simply talking about people who are "productive" or "more productive than their peers" but I'd argue that's completely different than what was meant by 10x). Hell, I have even been called a 10x engineer before by a manager who was trying to get me to work over 80 hours a week. And you know what? It worked. I felt like I was the best, my shit didn't stink, I was getting more tasks done than anyone else, and the entire time I was killing myself to do it. I slowed down a bit for about a month when I had to learn something new and I was fired after working with these same people for 5 years. "10x engineer" is a marketing gimmick used to gain leverage in various ways, IMO.

gurkendoktor 7y ago
> unless we're simply talking about people who are "productive" That is literally what the grandparent poster said, and matches the first two definitions I can find on Google. Personally, I often think of this example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3033446 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3033446 It's really interesting to see how both sides approach the problem (without rushing it), but only one of them solves it. That certainly counts as a 10x difference? > "10x engineer" is a marketing gimmick used to gain leverage in various ways, IMO. I've been following the discussion, and I think that "10x is a lie" has itself become a dangerous meme. It's already hard to tell some of my clients that developer quality matters, that hiring cheap developers en masse is pointless if they can't reliably fizzbuzz. Now Developer Twitter decides to proudly proclaim that everyone is equally capable as a developer, except some of them are toxic jerks. Sigh.
- KUcxrAVrtI 7y ago
  This has always been the end game of social justice being funded so well. Destroy the professions and commoditize them. Fortunately for us programming has been and always will be about the transformation of text into other text with a context sensitive grammar. Something that can't be automated and will always fail. Usually with people dying as the catalyst for on-shoring jobs again.
  - sooheon 7y ago
    Agree with a lot of this except the claim that professionals dwell only on certain shores.
    - gurkendoktor 7y ago
      If you lived in a $9/h region and had excellent development skills, why wouldn't you move to a $90/h region?
      - shardinator 7y ago
        Because the $90/hr regions won’t let you.
        gurkendoktor 7y ago
        Fair enough. Not everyone will leave their family behind, not everyone will get a visa. But the "rich shores" have a massive statistical advantage in terms of talent because they attract skilled people from abroad, with little migration in the other direction: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/37-percent-of-silicon-valley-foreign-born https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/37-percent-of-silicon-val...
    - KUcxrAVrtI 7y ago
      Reality disagrees. If software development could be done in India, Ukraine or whatever your preferred third world country is it would be getting done there already. There's a reason why developers move to one of a handful of cities to be productive.
carlmr 7y ago
I don't know about 10x, but the most productive devs I meet are usually the TDD kind, because they don't create as much technical debt, they are faster.
raducu 7y ago
My first team lead was a 10x developer; I still remember searching for the j2ME code that would have taken us two weeks to complete that he wrote overnight -- I remember how dismayed I was to find it all directly in the keyboard event method instead of being spread over to various places it should have been.
- JohnBooty 7y ago
  So his initial code was a "10x" achievement, accomplished in literally 1/10 (or less) of the time it would have taken the team. ....but the legacy of his "10x achievement" was an increased maintenance burden. So the overall gain was less than 10x. Perhaps it wasn't even a net gain in the long run. This is a good example of my main beef with the whole "10x" thing. So many superstar developers are lauded for banging things out quickly, while everybody else is stuck cleaning up 10x the mess. I truly believe that there are 10x developers, but identifying them is nearly impossible unless the person doing the identification is (a) a pretty savvy developer themselves (b) is intimately familiar with the choices made by the "10x" dev and their long-term ramifications.
username90 7y ago
> But I have never seen one that can do that _and_ produce quality. I've never seen a mediocre dev produce quality so it isn't needed in order to be 10 times as productive as a mediocre dev. What I think usually happens is that the 10x dev produces 10x as much technical debt as everyone else, so the team thinks that this guy is blocking all of them when it would have been just as bad if they put 10 mediocre people to do it instead, just that then the blame would have gotten spread out among 10 persons. Or he produces 10x the quality and 1x the code of everyone else, but his mediocre colleagues doesn't notice that his code is better since everyone else added so much crap so he is seen as just a decent 1x dev.

gurkendoktor 7y ago

> unless we're simply talking about people who are "productive" That is literally what the grandparent poster said, and matches the first two definitions I can find on Google. Personally, I often think of this example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3033446 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3033446 It's really interesting to see how both sides approach the problem (without rushing it), but only one of them solves it. That certainly counts as a 10x difference? > "10x engineer" is a marketing gimmick used to gain leverage in various ways, IMO. I've been following the discussion, and I think that "10x is a lie" has itself become a dangerous meme. It's already hard to tell some of my clients that developer quality matters, that hiring cheap developers en masse is pointless if they can't reliably fizzbuzz. Now Developer Twitter decides to proudly proclaim that everyone is equally capable as a developer, except some of them are toxic jerks. Sigh.

KUcxrAVrtI 7y ago
This has always been the end game of social justice being funded so well. Destroy the professions and commoditize them. Fortunately for us programming has been and always will be about the transformation of text into other text with a context sensitive grammar. Something that can't be automated and will always fail. Usually with people dying as the catalyst for on-shoring jobs again.
- sooheon 7y ago
  Agree with a lot of this except the claim that professionals dwell only on certain shores.
  - gurkendoktor 7y ago
    If you lived in a $9/h region and had excellent development skills, why wouldn't you move to a $90/h region?
    - shardinator 7y ago
      Because the $90/hr regions won’t let you.
      - gurkendoktor 7y ago
        Fair enough. Not everyone will leave their family behind, not everyone will get a visa. But the "rich shores" have a massive statistical advantage in terms of talent because they attract skilled people from abroad, with little migration in the other direction: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/37-percent-of-silicon-valley-foreign-born https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/37-percent-of-silicon-val...
  - KUcxrAVrtI 7y ago
    Reality disagrees. If software development could be done in India, Ukraine or whatever your preferred third world country is it would be getting done there already. There's a reason why developers move to one of a handful of cities to be productive.

carlmr 7y ago

I don't know about 10x, but the most productive devs I meet are usually the TDD kind, because they don't create as much technical debt, they are faster.

raducu 7y ago

My first team lead was a 10x developer; I still remember searching for the j2ME code that would have taken us two weeks to complete that he wrote overnight -- I remember how dismayed I was to find it all directly in the keyboard event method instead of being spread over to various places it should have been.

JohnBooty 7y ago
So his initial code was a "10x" achievement, accomplished in literally 1/10 (or less) of the time it would have taken the team. ....but the legacy of his "10x achievement" was an increased maintenance burden. So the overall gain was less than 10x. Perhaps it wasn't even a net gain in the long run. This is a good example of my main beef with the whole "10x" thing. So many superstar developers are lauded for banging things out quickly, while everybody else is stuck cleaning up 10x the mess. I truly believe that there are 10x developers, but identifying them is nearly impossible unless the person doing the identification is (a) a pretty savvy developer themselves (b) is intimately familiar with the choices made by the "10x" dev and their long-term ramifications.

username90 7y ago

> But I have never seen one that can do that _and_ produce quality. I've never seen a mediocre dev produce quality so it isn't needed in order to be 10 times as productive as a mediocre dev. What I think usually happens is that the 10x dev produces 10x as much technical debt as everyone else, so the team thinks that this guy is blocking all of them when it would have been just as bad if they put 10 mediocre people to do it instead, just that then the blame would have gotten spread out among 10 persons. Or he produces 10x the quality and 1x the code of everyone else, but his mediocre colleagues doesn't notice that his code is better since everyone else added so much crap so he is seen as just a decent 1x dev.