8 ms·

Forget 10x Developer – Become Full X Developer

36 points by high_byte 6y ago

m463 6y ago
just off the top of my head... the multiplier is much higher if you're on the project from the beginning: you have more choices, more history, your code some factors that can lower the multiplier: - working with other people's code - working "in the middle" of the problem - more abstract - sometimes unclear what people will do with your code, sometimes unclear what layers below you are doing. sometimes it can become a divisor when: - unmaintained old old code - more obscure languages or hardware - unclear problems or direction
- high_byte 6y ago
  great point. so far I explored the individual developer's perspective. perhaps I should take a shot at analyzing productivity of teams next!
- justicezyx 6y ago
  I disagree with this narrative. 10x developers are about efficiency, in that they are able to produces code that has effects that is vastly more impactful than the organization average, and at the same time, these activities are done in equal amount of time as others. If someone has a long history on a project, by definition, he/she can only achieve 10x because of others were effectively handicaped. That's the point in case from the article: 10x dev in this context should be the one who either built a system is so simple that newcomers easily onboard and contributed as good as anyone can be; or he has done a great job of organize the code base, docs, and organization structure, in such a way that newcomers can quickly get grasp of the parts that they are working on; and can quickly get the information needed when new work assignments coming in.
  - username90 6y ago
    You missed the point. The best dev in the world will be slow if he has to work with a huge mess created by many bad devs over a decade. However if the best dev in the world got to create his own architecture and compete with the people working on the mess he can beat a team of hundreds depending on the domain.
    - justicezyx 6y ago
      Oh no, I totally get your version of your 10x engineer. For my version, your version is seen as a facade, an euphoria exaggerated because of the basic human instinct to grandiose things beyond their true impact. If you look at any so called best engineer, their output is seldom much better than an average one, under close examination. Far from the claim of 10X. But none the less such individuals eventually garnered the title. Why? Because the impact of their invention were attributed to them far later than their original timing and more works by the normal human beings were simply ignored. We see this everyday, like Elon was touted as the real world iron man, where at the same time, he didn't even founded Tesla. How about the original Tesla founders? Even the original founders were exaggerated far beyond their own contribution anyway...
      - username90 6y ago
        So according to you technical debt isn't a huge problem that can slow down release of software by more than 10x? Or do you argue that every programmer creates close to equal amounts of technical debt? Or what is your point? If you just argue that people who created technical debt that only they can work with are often misattributed as 10x programmers then basically everyone agrees with you, but that wasn't really the point you responded to.
      - dragonwriter 6y ago
        > If you look at any so called best engineer, their output is seldom much better than an average one, under close examination. F I disagree. Under close examination, the best engineers contribute a greater multiple than is apparent at a superficial analysis (and the best engineers under close examination may not even be the same ones as stand out under superficial examination.) The superficial “best” contributions tends to measured by the reciprocal of time to complete a task of a given complexity to team standards. But a lot of the best engineers contributions will be in unsticking (or preventing) other engineers impediments, contributing to process improvement, design critique that avoids the team taking long walks down paths that need to be undone later, and otherwise improving velocity on tasks that other people are doing concurrently or down the road from their action.
908B64B197 6y ago
Reading the comments in the thread I think a lot of engineers never really encountered a real 10x before. I was skeptical too before it happened, but after meeting and working with that person I was convinced. My honest advice is simply to pay more if you want to attract them; These guys don't jump ship frequently and are often off the radar for extended periods of time (hints, they are getting internally promoted pretty fast). Especially now with remote being more socially acceptable it's pretty much the time to hire before these guys get locked-in with a vesting schedule.
- high_byte 6y ago
  I am intrigued. can you elaborate? what made them so, in your opinion?
- romanovcode 6y ago
  > These guys don't jump ship frequently and are often off the radar for extended periods of time (hints, they are getting internally promoted pretty fast) I think Full X developer has exactly the same work-path TBH. If a person knows (and I mean really knows) front-end, back-end, databases, devops and has some people skills he will be promoted crazy fast.
- segmondy 6y ago
  This. Folks can agree that there's 10x in everything. Banksy is 20x artist. Tony Hawk is 20x skateboarder. Yo-yo Ma is 20x Cellist. We can find exceptional folks in every field, and then there are folks who are really 10x. Everyone knows easily the 20x in computing. We can easily recognize Donald Knuth, Peter Norvig, etc as 10x+ computer scientist.. Don't think that folks will also argue that Jeff Dean, Fabrice Bellard, John Carmack, Linus, Dennis Ritchie, Jamie Zawinksi, Brian Kernighan, Ken Thompson, Bill Joy, Donald Knuth, Dan Berstein, Brad Fitzpatrick, Doug Cutting, Rob Pike, Joe Armstrong are 20x programmers. Yet 10x and most people get upset, and you're very correct because they haven't met those. I have met one, and it wasn't about pay, they worked in an average non tech city, they got paid average salary. They loved the work tho, and cranked out almost as much work as everyone else in a department of around 15 folks.
- darkhorse13 6y ago
MrPowers 6y ago
This article hinges on the "productivity is subjective" argument, which isn't true in all cases. There are objective measures for certain types of productivity: library downloads, Stackoverflow points, blog views, GitHub stars. I see developers adding high value features to the Apache Spark codebase that's used by hundreds of thousands of people. The top Apache Spark Stackoverflow question responder has hundreds of thousands of points (their answers are always the best). Some folks build libraries that get thousands of downloads a day. There are even popularity gauges that can be used for internal projects. Who is building the code that everyone is using and who is building stuff that gets thrown out. This article also makes the fallacy of equating productivity with working hours. Working hours + productivity are correlated (top Spark devs seem to work constantly), but I also see people that work really hard and can't get traction for any of their open source / internal projects. The power law is at play in software. A relatively small number of developers write the code that gets used the most. Yea, that might not be true for a given web app, but it's definitely the case for software overall.
- amelius 6y ago
  > The power law is at play in software. A relatively small number of developers write the code that gets used the most. Yes, but there is another law: if X doesn't write a certain library with basic functionality, then Y will. So your law translates to: we all use the same libraries for our basic needs. The question is, does it mean anything?
- Scarblac 6y ago
  Even so, it's often not the developer who gets to decide who writes what.
- eptcyka 6y ago
  I think there are far more truly productive developers than there are people with popular blogs, many a github star or SO points. Of course, these are indicators of productivity, but I feel these metrics are too specific.
- high_byte 6y ago
  > This article hinges on the "productivity is subjective" argument, which isn't true in all cases. There are objective measures for certain types of productivity: library downloads, Stackoverflow points, blog views, GitHub stars. Lines of Code is not a measurement, why would lib downloads be? Remember the time some 30-line JS lib who just does "split" or something like that was removed and it broke the Internet? heavily relied on - yes (ie heavily downloaded), highly productive? doubtful. You are referring popularity, which sure is part of the sum output of you as a person, but this article is meant to reference purely development productivity. Marketing or whatever is beyond scope. Maybe next post! (popularity gauge != productivity gauge)
theamk 6y ago
Maybe I am being pedantic here, but “x” in “10x” developer doesn't mean “variable” at all - it mean “ multiplication” as taught in school. Compare to “10x binoculars”. But even to the point of the post, this seems to imply that some developers are not as productive as others because they eat, sleep, and play xbox. You just have to stop doing this and you’d be super productive! This seems very silly and dangerous idea. A person can only spend a few hours a day doing “hard thinking”. Striving to always be maximally productive, day after day, will only lead to burnout.
Tade0 6y ago
I don't think 10x developers actually exist - there are just some people who happened to have good, original ideas. It's more art than science at this point as there's no clear path to achieving this status, just like there is no clear path to winning the International Chopin Piano Competition. But I've met 2x developers, where "x" is your average corporate code monkey such as me in my current role or my teammates, whose children/spouses don't seem to be at peace with the concept of their family member working from home. I know three people who at the moment are working two jobs. What they have in common is the uncanny ability to squeeze out 8h of focused work a day. I've measured my ability in this regard and best I can do is 4h of taking orders from other people on a given day. It appears to be enough to maintain employment for now.
- mordymoop 6y ago
  Most engineers are 0.1x engineers, just trying to remain employed while browsing a lot of HN. Then there are 1x engineers using the rare skill of actually trying reasonably hard and having discipline. (These 1x engineers may eventually experience a significant life disruption, mental or physical illness, or simply lose the feeling of meaning from the work, and subsequently become 0.1x engineers temporarily or permanently.) There may be actual 10x engineers for short stretches. I may have been something like this for a short period in grad school when I was obsessed, skilled, healthy and knowledgeable all at the same time. But I’m certainly not anymore.
  - throw14082020 6y ago
    > But I’m certainly not anymore. Can you explain why, and what you would do differently?
    - mordymoop 6y ago
      Back then I was 25, had far fewer health problems and more natural energy and mental focus, no kids, no girlfriend, no real hobbies, nothing to do on evenings or weekends, world-class expertise in my narrow domain, and a driving obsession with the project I was working on. None of these things are true right now. Even if I could find a project I could be similarly obsessed about, I am no longer young, and I have many other priorities and commitments, both on my time and my mental energy. I could not and genuinely don't want to go back to the Diet Coke fueled 14 hour workdays of my 20s. Being 10x at something is not inherently desirable. It's more just the recognition of the fact that productivity varies.
valbaca 6y ago
My pet peeve is the incorrect definition of the "10x dev" The "10xDev" is one that's 10 times more effective than the least effective developer; NOT 10x the average dev nor 10x the median dev. The 10x is the absolute best versus the absolute worst. It's not the good vs the bad. Honestly there's no surprise here. What field doesn't have such a major difference between the most talented vs the least talented? The discussion is overblown. From Peopleware: "Count on the best people outperforming the worst by about 10:1" "Count on the best performer being about 2.5 times better than the median performer" "Count on the half that are better-than-median performers out-doing the other half by more than 2:1" Most "10x dev" articles should really be using "2.5x" if they're comparing the best with the median. Again, a 2.5x difference between the good and the bad is again, not surprising. It's also worth noting that the study Peopleware uses is from 1985 and sampled about 600 devs. The amount of pixels spilled over this basically ancient software study is honestly hilarious.
- Tade0 6y ago
  The "10xDev" is one that's 10 times more effective than the least effective developer; NOT 10x the average dev or 10x the median dev. What about people who have negative effectiveness?
  - codemac 6y ago
    Or who have positive effectiveness when looking solely at their production, but negative effectiveness of the team or company's production?
    - paulryanrogers 6y ago
      At one point I think I was that dev. Software engineering is as much communication and human relationships as computer science.
  - dolni 6y ago
    A friend of mine has used the phrase "activity != productivity" before. I think it fits these kinds of people well.
jasode 6y ago
To submitter/author high_byte, You're analyzing "10x" with math because you're being too literal. I've commented before that it's just a rhetorical label that rolls off the tongue easily: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13753178 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13753178 And if you still can't make peace with "10x", it still doesn't change the fact that people want to label/categorize the amazing programmers like Linus Torvalds, Fabrice Bellard, etc. -- that set themselves apart from average: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24753594 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24753594
- high_byte 6y ago
  excellent viewpoint. I can agree with a lot of it, here's my take on it: > It doesn't matter what the label is; any label that attempts to stratify programmers is a "myth". I can agree with this, but the thing is this is true regarding anything nowadays, whatever you say someone, somewhere will find displeasing. the "10x" label however, to my argument, is "10x" worse than other labels such as "star". perhaps you don't take this phrase too literally, but it does sort of "quantify" in people's mind the concept of 1000% productivity, which can be interpreted as unattainable. my goal is to let people accept their mortality - there is some output you can produce which is optimal, 100% or so. it is much more rational to think your output is 10% and you can progress from there. at least in my mind, it is discouraging to say "your 100% is still not nearly enough" I guess the point is - rhetoric speak matters. p.s. I just love sigma-3 programmer. can I get to sigma-5? ;)
- darkhorse13 6y ago
  Fully agreed. I was always under the impression that "10x" was just a way of labeling insanely gifted engineers with enormous outputs compared to the rest of us. Taking it literally and writing an article with math equations is missing the point (in my opinion).
  - high_byte 6y ago
    my intention was for people to set attainable goals for themselves. not to interpret "10x" literally, or mathematically. I did use it figuratively, such that if x = 10%, then you get 100%. I do appreciate the feedback as it helps me formalizing my thoughts in the future.
throw14082020 6y ago
Think the title is clickbaity? Wait till you read the article.
- eptcyka 6y ago
  You'll never believe how clickbaity this article is!
- high_byte 6y ago
  We Sampled The Top 10 Clickbaits So You Don't Have To, Click Here To Find Out!
tbrownaw 6y ago
I have no idea what this article is actually trying to say. Is it a "nothing actually means anything" sort of thing?
- high_byte 6y ago
  hahaha made me chuckle. it is an attempt to bust the myth you have to be "10 times more", whatever that means, than your 100%. obviously you can't output 1000%. you can however, output 10% and improve 10 times than that. this is the first article in a series aimed to figure out exactly this.
bigmattystyles 6y ago
If you're a 10x developer and you're getting paid the same per hour you're really a 10x sucker. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for taking pride in your work and doing a good job well, but if the 1x engineer is getting his stuff done and spending less of their life at work then your priorities are all wrong.
Geminidog 6y ago
Another day another programming metaphor/analogy on HN. It's like the quotation "Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're gonna get." Yeah I already knew life is random, comparing it to another random thing only makes the quotation seem insightful when in reality nothing substantial was actually said. HN is loaded with variations of programming/management metaphors.
- high_byte 6y ago
  where else do programming metaphors supposed to go when they are born?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- naniwaduni 6y ago
  Do people not read the labels on their boxes of chocolate??
  - Geminidog 6y ago
    https://www.sees.com/chocolate/assortments https://www.sees.com/chocolate/assortments Forest Gump said that quote. He's referring to these box's of chocolates where each candy contains some filling that's pretty much unknown until you eat it.
    - naniwaduni 6y ago
      My experience is that those are generally labelled with a list of varieties included and their contents. Some boxes are better or worse about describing the candies in a way that makes them identifiable, I guess, but usually you can have a pretty good idea of what to expect before putting one in your mouth. Maybe this is a result of greater allergy awareness and wasn't true of the ... 80s? which kind of makes it a different simile...
      - 6y ago
TruthWillHurt 6y ago
What is this bullshit...
kokanee 6y ago
I am an X Dev Series S
cccc4all 6y ago
I’m going to guess the author has never met or worked with 10X developer, or Rockstar developer, or Ninja developer or many other previous incarnations. It’s not about mathematical equations or lines of code or some superficial numerical value. Although, side effects of such developers can result in some numerical improvements. It’s about impact in the project and development team. Being effective and productive in the field. Techlead has a humorous, and mostly correct take on 10X engineer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iydpa_gPdes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iydpa_gPdes
bobbydreamer 6y ago
X's most time depend on environment as well meaning computer has to be fast with resource available to support. X1. Resource constraints : office and home all windows and most times chrome kills. X2. Analysis killer : To analyse either run a query or batch job. It takes ridiculous amount of time X3. Sequencing mess up : Due to priority order of planned events in workday change which leads to frustration X4. Meetings you attend inplace of others. X5. Adhoc request or query you need to attend now. Most the time be prepared to be 10x and one day when you get a chance and everything aligns. Go play...

36 points by high_byte 6y ago

m463 6y ago

just off the top of my head... the multiplier is much higher if you're on the project from the beginning: you have more choices, more history, your code some factors that can lower the multiplier: - working with other people's code - working "in the middle" of the problem - more abstract - sometimes unclear what people will do with your code, sometimes unclear what layers below you are doing. sometimes it can become a divisor when: - unmaintained old old code - more obscure languages or hardware - unclear problems or direction

high_byte 6y ago
great point. so far I explored the individual developer's perspective. perhaps I should take a shot at analyzing productivity of teams next!
justicezyx 6y ago
I disagree with this narrative. 10x developers are about efficiency, in that they are able to produces code that has effects that is vastly more impactful than the organization average, and at the same time, these activities are done in equal amount of time as others. If someone has a long history on a project, by definition, he/she can only achieve 10x because of others were effectively handicaped. That's the point in case from the article: 10x dev in this context should be the one who either built a system is so simple that newcomers easily onboard and contributed as good as anyone can be; or he has done a great job of organize the code base, docs, and organization structure, in such a way that newcomers can quickly get grasp of the parts that they are working on; and can quickly get the information needed when new work assignments coming in.
- username90 6y ago
  You missed the point. The best dev in the world will be slow if he has to work with a huge mess created by many bad devs over a decade. However if the best dev in the world got to create his own architecture and compete with the people working on the mess he can beat a team of hundreds depending on the domain.
  - justicezyx 6y ago
    Oh no, I totally get your version of your 10x engineer. For my version, your version is seen as a facade, an euphoria exaggerated because of the basic human instinct to grandiose things beyond their true impact. If you look at any so called best engineer, their output is seldom much better than an average one, under close examination. Far from the claim of 10X. But none the less such individuals eventually garnered the title. Why? Because the impact of their invention were attributed to them far later than their original timing and more works by the normal human beings were simply ignored. We see this everyday, like Elon was touted as the real world iron man, where at the same time, he didn't even founded Tesla. How about the original Tesla founders? Even the original founders were exaggerated far beyond their own contribution anyway...
    - username90 6y ago
      So according to you technical debt isn't a huge problem that can slow down release of software by more than 10x? Or do you argue that every programmer creates close to equal amounts of technical debt? Or what is your point? If you just argue that people who created technical debt that only they can work with are often misattributed as 10x programmers then basically everyone agrees with you, but that wasn't really the point you responded to.
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      > If you look at any so called best engineer, their output is seldom much better than an average one, under close examination. F I disagree. Under close examination, the best engineers contribute a greater multiple than is apparent at a superficial analysis (and the best engineers under close examination may not even be the same ones as stand out under superficial examination.) The superficial “best” contributions tends to measured by the reciprocal of time to complete a task of a given complexity to team standards. But a lot of the best engineers contributions will be in unsticking (or preventing) other engineers impediments, contributing to process improvement, design critique that avoids the team taking long walks down paths that need to be undone later, and otherwise improving velocity on tasks that other people are doing concurrently or down the road from their action.

908B64B197 6y ago

Reading the comments in the thread I think a lot of engineers never really encountered a real 10x before. I was skeptical too before it happened, but after meeting and working with that person I was convinced. My honest advice is simply to pay more if you want to attract them; These guys don't jump ship frequently and are often off the radar for extended periods of time (hints, they are getting internally promoted pretty fast). Especially now with remote being more socially acceptable it's pretty much the time to hire before these guys get locked-in with a vesting schedule.

high_byte 6y ago
I am intrigued. can you elaborate? what made them so, in your opinion?
romanovcode 6y ago
> These guys don't jump ship frequently and are often off the radar for extended periods of time (hints, they are getting internally promoted pretty fast) I think Full X developer has exactly the same work-path TBH. If a person knows (and I mean really knows) front-end, back-end, databases, devops and has some people skills he will be promoted crazy fast.
segmondy 6y ago
This. Folks can agree that there's 10x in everything. Banksy is 20x artist. Tony Hawk is 20x skateboarder. Yo-yo Ma is 20x Cellist. We can find exceptional folks in every field, and then there are folks who are really 10x. Everyone knows easily the 20x in computing. We can easily recognize Donald Knuth, Peter Norvig, etc as 10x+ computer scientist.. Don't think that folks will also argue that Jeff Dean, Fabrice Bellard, John Carmack, Linus, Dennis Ritchie, Jamie Zawinksi, Brian Kernighan, Ken Thompson, Bill Joy, Donald Knuth, Dan Berstein, Brad Fitzpatrick, Doug Cutting, Rob Pike, Joe Armstrong are 20x programmers. Yet 10x and most people get upset, and you're very correct because they haven't met those. I have met one, and it wasn't about pay, they worked in an average non tech city, they got paid average salary. They loved the work tho, and cranked out almost as much work as everyone else in a department of around 15 folks.
darkhorse13 6y ago

MrPowers 6y ago

This article hinges on the "productivity is subjective" argument, which isn't true in all cases. There are objective measures for certain types of productivity: library downloads, Stackoverflow points, blog views, GitHub stars. I see developers adding high value features to the Apache Spark codebase that's used by hundreds of thousands of people. The top Apache Spark Stackoverflow question responder has hundreds of thousands of points (their answers are always the best). Some folks build libraries that get thousands of downloads a day. There are even popularity gauges that can be used for internal projects. Who is building the code that everyone is using and who is building stuff that gets thrown out. This article also makes the fallacy of equating productivity with working hours. Working hours + productivity are correlated (top Spark devs seem to work constantly), but I also see people that work really hard and can't get traction for any of their open source / internal projects. The power law is at play in software. A relatively small number of developers write the code that gets used the most. Yea, that might not be true for a given web app, but it's definitely the case for software overall.

amelius 6y ago
> The power law is at play in software. A relatively small number of developers write the code that gets used the most. Yes, but there is another law: if X doesn't write a certain library with basic functionality, then Y will. So your law translates to: we all use the same libraries for our basic needs. The question is, does it mean anything?
Scarblac 6y ago
Even so, it's often not the developer who gets to decide who writes what.
eptcyka 6y ago
I think there are far more truly productive developers than there are people with popular blogs, many a github star or SO points. Of course, these are indicators of productivity, but I feel these metrics are too specific.
high_byte 6y ago
> This article hinges on the "productivity is subjective" argument, which isn't true in all cases. There are objective measures for certain types of productivity: library downloads, Stackoverflow points, blog views, GitHub stars. Lines of Code is not a measurement, why would lib downloads be? Remember the time some 30-line JS lib who just does "split" or something like that was removed and it broke the Internet? heavily relied on - yes (ie heavily downloaded), highly productive? doubtful. You are referring popularity, which sure is part of the sum output of you as a person, but this article is meant to reference purely development productivity. Marketing or whatever is beyond scope. Maybe next post! (popularity gauge != productivity gauge)

theamk 6y ago

Maybe I am being pedantic here, but “x” in “10x” developer doesn't mean “variable” at all - it mean “ multiplication” as taught in school. Compare to “10x binoculars”. But even to the point of the post, this seems to imply that some developers are not as productive as others because they eat, sleep, and play xbox. You just have to stop doing this and you’d be super productive! This seems very silly and dangerous idea. A person can only spend a few hours a day doing “hard thinking”. Striving to always be maximally productive, day after day, will only lead to burnout.

Tade0 6y ago

I don't think 10x developers actually exist - there are just some people who happened to have good, original ideas. It's more art than science at this point as there's no clear path to achieving this status, just like there is no clear path to winning the International Chopin Piano Competition. But I've met 2x developers, where "x" is your average corporate code monkey such as me in my current role or my teammates, whose children/spouses don't seem to be at peace with the concept of their family member working from home. I know three people who at the moment are working two jobs. What they have in common is the uncanny ability to squeeze out 8h of focused work a day. I've measured my ability in this regard and best I can do is 4h of taking orders from other people on a given day. It appears to be enough to maintain employment for now.

mordymoop 6y ago
Most engineers are 0.1x engineers, just trying to remain employed while browsing a lot of HN. Then there are 1x engineers using the rare skill of actually trying reasonably hard and having discipline. (These 1x engineers may eventually experience a significant life disruption, mental or physical illness, or simply lose the feeling of meaning from the work, and subsequently become 0.1x engineers temporarily or permanently.) There may be actual 10x engineers for short stretches. I may have been something like this for a short period in grad school when I was obsessed, skilled, healthy and knowledgeable all at the same time. But I’m certainly not anymore.
- throw14082020 6y ago
  > But I’m certainly not anymore. Can you explain why, and what you would do differently?
  - mordymoop 6y ago
    Back then I was 25, had far fewer health problems and more natural energy and mental focus, no kids, no girlfriend, no real hobbies, nothing to do on evenings or weekends, world-class expertise in my narrow domain, and a driving obsession with the project I was working on. None of these things are true right now. Even if I could find a project I could be similarly obsessed about, I am no longer young, and I have many other priorities and commitments, both on my time and my mental energy. I could not and genuinely don't want to go back to the Diet Coke fueled 14 hour workdays of my 20s. Being 10x at something is not inherently desirable. It's more just the recognition of the fact that productivity varies.

valbaca 6y ago

My pet peeve is the incorrect definition of the "10x dev" The "10xDev" is one that's 10 times more effective than the least effective developer; NOT 10x the average dev nor 10x the median dev. The 10x is the absolute best versus the absolute worst. It's not the good vs the bad. Honestly there's no surprise here. What field doesn't have such a major difference between the most talented vs the least talented? The discussion is overblown. From Peopleware: "Count on the best people outperforming the worst by about 10:1" "Count on the best performer being about 2.5 times better than the median performer" "Count on the half that are better-than-median performers out-doing the other half by more than 2:1" Most "10x dev" articles should really be using "2.5x" if they're comparing the best with the median. Again, a 2.5x difference between the good and the bad is again, not surprising. It's also worth noting that the study Peopleware uses is from 1985 and sampled about 600 devs. The amount of pixels spilled over this basically ancient software study is honestly hilarious.

Tade0 6y ago
The "10xDev" is one that's 10 times more effective than the least effective developer; NOT 10x the average dev or 10x the median dev. What about people who have negative effectiveness?
- codemac 6y ago
  Or who have positive effectiveness when looking solely at their production, but negative effectiveness of the team or company's production?
  - paulryanrogers 6y ago
    At one point I think I was that dev. Software engineering is as much communication and human relationships as computer science.
- dolni 6y ago
  A friend of mine has used the phrase "activity != productivity" before. I think it fits these kinds of people well.

jasode 6y ago

To submitter/author high_byte, You're analyzing "10x" with math because you're being too literal. I've commented before that it's just a rhetorical label that rolls off the tongue easily: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13753178 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13753178 And if you still can't make peace with "10x", it still doesn't change the fact that people want to label/categorize the amazing programmers like Linus Torvalds, Fabrice Bellard, etc. -- that set themselves apart from average: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24753594 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24753594

high_byte 6y ago
excellent viewpoint. I can agree with a lot of it, here's my take on it: > It doesn't matter what the label is; any label that attempts to stratify programmers is a "myth". I can agree with this, but the thing is this is true regarding anything nowadays, whatever you say someone, somewhere will find displeasing. the "10x" label however, to my argument, is "10x" worse than other labels such as "star". perhaps you don't take this phrase too literally, but it does sort of "quantify" in people's mind the concept of 1000% productivity, which can be interpreted as unattainable. my goal is to let people accept their mortality - there is some output you can produce which is optimal, 100% or so. it is much more rational to think your output is 10% and you can progress from there. at least in my mind, it is discouraging to say "your 100% is still not nearly enough" I guess the point is - rhetoric speak matters. p.s. I just love sigma-3 programmer. can I get to sigma-5? ;)
darkhorse13 6y ago
Fully agreed. I was always under the impression that "10x" was just a way of labeling insanely gifted engineers with enormous outputs compared to the rest of us. Taking it literally and writing an article with math equations is missing the point (in my opinion).
- high_byte 6y ago
  my intention was for people to set attainable goals for themselves. not to interpret "10x" literally, or mathematically. I did use it figuratively, such that if x = 10%, then you get 100%. I do appreciate the feedback as it helps me formalizing my thoughts in the future.

throw14082020 6y ago

Think the title is clickbaity? Wait till you read the article.

eptcyka 6y ago
You'll never believe how clickbaity this article is!
high_byte 6y ago
We Sampled The Top 10 Clickbaits So You Don't Have To, Click Here To Find Out!

tbrownaw 6y ago

I have no idea what this article is actually trying to say. Is it a "nothing actually means anything" sort of thing?

high_byte 6y ago
hahaha made me chuckle. it is an attempt to bust the myth you have to be "10 times more", whatever that means, than your 100%. obviously you can't output 1000%. you can however, output 10% and improve 10 times than that. this is the first article in a series aimed to figure out exactly this.

bigmattystyles 6y ago

If you're a 10x developer and you're getting paid the same per hour you're really a 10x sucker. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for taking pride in your work and doing a good job well, but if the 1x engineer is getting his stuff done and spending less of their life at work then your priorities are all wrong.

Geminidog 6y ago

Another day another programming metaphor/analogy on HN. It's like the quotation "Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're gonna get." Yeah I already knew life is random, comparing it to another random thing only makes the quotation seem insightful when in reality nothing substantial was actually said. HN is loaded with variations of programming/management metaphors.

high_byte 6y ago
where else do programming metaphors supposed to go when they are born?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
naniwaduni 6y ago
Do people not read the labels on their boxes of chocolate??
- Geminidog 6y ago
  https://www.sees.com/chocolate/assortments https://www.sees.com/chocolate/assortments Forest Gump said that quote. He's referring to these box's of chocolates where each candy contains some filling that's pretty much unknown until you eat it.
  - naniwaduni 6y ago
    My experience is that those are generally labelled with a list of varieties included and their contents. Some boxes are better or worse about describing the candies in a way that makes them identifiable, I guess, but usually you can have a pretty good idea of what to expect before putting one in your mouth. Maybe this is a result of greater allergy awareness and wasn't true of the ... 80s? which kind of makes it a different simile...
    - 6y ago

TruthWillHurt 6y ago

What is this bullshit...

kokanee 6y ago

I am an X Dev Series S

cccc4all 6y ago

I’m going to guess the author has never met or worked with 10X developer, or Rockstar developer, or Ninja developer or many other previous incarnations. It’s not about mathematical equations or lines of code or some superficial numerical value. Although, side effects of such developers can result in some numerical improvements. It’s about impact in the project and development team. Being effective and productive in the field. Techlead has a humorous, and mostly correct take on 10X engineer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iydpa_gPdes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iydpa_gPdes

bobbydreamer 6y ago

X's most time depend on environment as well meaning computer has to be fast with resource available to support. X1. Resource constraints : office and home all windows and most times chrome kills. X2. Analysis killer : To analyse either run a query or batch job. It takes ridiculous amount of time X3. Sequencing mess up : Due to priority order of planned events in workday change which leads to frustration X4. Meetings you attend inplace of others. X5. Adhoc request or query you need to attend now. Most the time be prepared to be 10x and one day when you get a chance and everything aligns. Go play...