21 ms·

My go-to examples of 10x developers are benevolent dictators like antirez (of Redis), evanw (of esbuild + Figma CTO), youyuxi (of Vue), Carmack, etc. Both qual

by e1g 5y ago

My go-to examples of 10x developers are benevolent dictators like antirez (of Redis), evanw (of esbuild + Figma CTO), youyuxi (of Vue), Carmack, etc. Both qualitatively and quantitatively, their output is at least 10x of a typical developer at a typical company, not even counting everything these people do besides writing code. Many more are not famous but are in the same league of impact/productivity - I'm genuinely puzzled how someone can say such people do not exist.

ignoramous 5y ago
You mix popularity with 10x. Not all 10x programmers are popular. I believe 10xers exist within a business or technical context. This isn't limited to the field of computer science, but even traditional engineering (Edison) and sciences (Newton) have plenty 10x examples.
- e1g 5y ago
  I'm not mixing - as I wrote, many more are not famous, but their impact is similar. When discussing abstract concepts, it helps to have concrete examples of that phenomena. Using "famous" people is a shortcut to define a shared definition for what "10x" might look like. And yes, there are "10x" teachers, investors, lawyers, storytellers, sales folks, etc. Similarly, the distribution of talent that helps with "software development" might have a very long tail, leading to extraordinary performance versus the median.
- texasbigdata 5y ago
  IF 10x exist, some will be popular and most won’t. Obviously he won’t know the obscure ones or pick examples you can’t relate to. So while he didn’t prove his point perhaps, perhaps you didn’t disprove his either. :)
randomsearch 5y ago
To pose it another way: for general software Dev (not some niche use case that only one guy understands), let’s say building websites in Vue or React, the idea of a 10x developer is that they can work in January and another, average, programmer can then spend February, March, April, May, June, July, August, and Sept… and the average guy won’t get more done? Or they come in only every other Monday and contribute as much as a median Dev working full time? It just doesn’t seem reasonable at all, at least if we read it literally. I have worked with and met great, outstanding, developers who are much better than me. Some of them famous. None of them are anything close to 10x as productive, and I’m not particularly great. They’re much smarter than me, for sure, but they’re not 10x as productive.
- e1g 5y ago
  There is no "10X" touch-typist because a) the performance limit is absolute & relatively low and b) the learning curve is such that it's easy to get to the limit and plateau. Now let's increase complexity - still typing, but you must translate the text from another language. Increase again - now you're translating poetry. Increase again - the poetry is original Shakespeare. You need to translate into contemporary English approachable to Gen Z, as a script for a TikTok short, referencing memes from current events. There is no doubt that some people will have a combination of talents - in language, typing, copywriting, built-up cultural knowledge, lived experiences - that will make them 10X in such jobs. The more software development work approaches touch-typing, the less difference between 1x and 10X — strict Jira tickets in, garbage out, maybe slightly faster. Spec-work, and most grunt-work, is undifferentiated and does not benefit from a 10X person. The more your work approaches poetry - such as exercising user empathy, improving the architecture, considering UX, respecting performance constraints, understanding user's jobs to be done, and improving your implementation around that - the more creative space there is for 10X to reveal itself.
  - thrower123 5y ago
    Even with drudge ticket-punching work, there is a vast spectrum of productivity between somebody who is capable and conscientious enough to do it correctly the first time and the person who has to rework everything multiple times because they can't do it right the first time and continue making mistakes.
  - dexen 5y ago
    >There is no "10X" touch-typist Ironically enough your example is flawed: there are documented 10x touch-typists. The realities of the court system place high demands on the typists; the minimum required typing speed is already quite high: trained court reporter or closed captioner must write speeds of approximately 180, 200, and 225 words per minute (wpm) at very high accuracy in the categories of literary, jury charge, and testimony, respectively[1] - and some exceed the minimum and go for 300 wpm. Even better, the official record for American English [is] 375 wpm [2]. Compare that to the average typing speeds around 30 - 40 wpm [3] Granted, the court reporters use specialized input devices (stenotypes) - but hey, the same can be said about highly productive programmers, who use specialized development environments - and sometimes also specialized input devices. -- [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stenotype https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stenotype [2] ibid. [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touch_typing#Speed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touch_typing#Speed
pcauthorn 5y ago
I agree. Another example, Linus T wrote git from scratch to hosting the Linux kernel in 2.5 months. I'd say 10x is a low estimate. I've worked with a guy who wrote great code like he was typing an email. Everyone has a ceiling of the complexity of problems they can handle, some programmers are outliers in this regard.
- dustintrex 5y ago
  Bit of an aside, but writing an email is its own art. Not many developers know how to write an email that a busy, non-technical VP will read, understand and act on in the way they intended. (Then again, neither do many managers.)

by e1g 5y ago

ignoramous 5y ago

You mix popularity with 10x. Not all 10x programmers are popular. I believe 10xers exist within a business or technical context. This isn't limited to the field of computer science, but even traditional engineering (Edison) and sciences (Newton) have plenty 10x examples.

e1g 5y ago
I'm not mixing - as I wrote, many more are not famous, but their impact is similar. When discussing abstract concepts, it helps to have concrete examples of that phenomena. Using "famous" people is a shortcut to define a shared definition for what "10x" might look like. And yes, there are "10x" teachers, investors, lawyers, storytellers, sales folks, etc. Similarly, the distribution of talent that helps with "software development" might have a very long tail, leading to extraordinary performance versus the median.
texasbigdata 5y ago
IF 10x exist, some will be popular and most won’t. Obviously he won’t know the obscure ones or pick examples you can’t relate to. So while he didn’t prove his point perhaps, perhaps you didn’t disprove his either. :)

randomsearch 5y ago

To pose it another way: for general software Dev (not some niche use case that only one guy understands), let’s say building websites in Vue or React, the idea of a 10x developer is that they can work in January and another, average, programmer can then spend February, March, April, May, June, July, August, and Sept… and the average guy won’t get more done? Or they come in only every other Monday and contribute as much as a median Dev working full time? It just doesn’t seem reasonable at all, at least if we read it literally. I have worked with and met great, outstanding, developers who are much better than me. Some of them famous. None of them are anything close to 10x as productive, and I’m not particularly great. They’re much smarter than me, for sure, but they’re not 10x as productive.

e1g 5y ago
There is no "10X" touch-typist because a) the performance limit is absolute & relatively low and b) the learning curve is such that it's easy to get to the limit and plateau. Now let's increase complexity - still typing, but you must translate the text from another language. Increase again - now you're translating poetry. Increase again - the poetry is original Shakespeare. You need to translate into contemporary English approachable to Gen Z, as a script for a TikTok short, referencing memes from current events. There is no doubt that some people will have a combination of talents - in language, typing, copywriting, built-up cultural knowledge, lived experiences - that will make them 10X in such jobs. The more software development work approaches touch-typing, the less difference between 1x and 10X — strict Jira tickets in, garbage out, maybe slightly faster. Spec-work, and most grunt-work, is undifferentiated and does not benefit from a 10X person. The more your work approaches poetry - such as exercising user empathy, improving the architecture, considering UX, respecting performance constraints, understanding user's jobs to be done, and improving your implementation around that - the more creative space there is for 10X to reveal itself.
- thrower123 5y ago
  Even with drudge ticket-punching work, there is a vast spectrum of productivity between somebody who is capable and conscientious enough to do it correctly the first time and the person who has to rework everything multiple times because they can't do it right the first time and continue making mistakes.
- dexen 5y ago
  >There is no "10X" touch-typist Ironically enough your example is flawed: there are documented 10x touch-typists. The realities of the court system place high demands on the typists; the minimum required typing speed is already quite high: trained court reporter or closed captioner must write speeds of approximately 180, 200, and 225 words per minute (wpm) at very high accuracy in the categories of literary, jury charge, and testimony, respectively[1] - and some exceed the minimum and go for 300 wpm. Even better, the official record for American English [is] 375 wpm [2]. Compare that to the average typing speeds around 30 - 40 wpm [3] Granted, the court reporters use specialized input devices (stenotypes) - but hey, the same can be said about highly productive programmers, who use specialized development environments - and sometimes also specialized input devices. -- [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stenotype https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stenotype [2] ibid. [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touch_typing#Speed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touch_typing#Speed

pcauthorn 5y ago

I agree. Another example, Linus T wrote git from scratch to hosting the Linux kernel in 2.5 months. I'd say 10x is a low estimate. I've worked with a guy who wrote great code like he was typing an email. Everyone has a ceiling of the complexity of problems they can handle, some programmers are outliers in this regard.

dustintrex 5y ago
Bit of an aside, but writing an email is its own art. Not many developers know how to write an email that a busy, non-technical VP will read, understand and act on in the way they intended. (Then again, neither do many managers.)