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I think that depends on the context in which you’re working. Flashes of genius don’t have much place an an enterprise code base. Everything is rigorously standa

I think that depends on the context in which you’re working. Flashes of genius don’t have much place an an enterprise code base. Everything is rigorously standardized and separated into layers. Each layer has a bunch of bookkeeping about dependencies, interfaces, mocks, expectations, and test cases. This is not really brain work; it’s typing. Now maybe if you’re really brilliant, you’ll do much better than average with the implementation of a really tricky layer. But the layers are rarely tricky, implementing them never takes all that much time, the slow part is always the integration and associated mocking rituals. Typing speed pays better dividends than brainpower in terms of productivity, there.

FlyingAvatar 5y ago
I find this true to an extent, but this also where a lot of unnecessary complexity, risk aversion and process live.
IshKebab 5y ago
Maybe that's why so many people think 10x programmers don't exist - they work in environments where a 10x programmer isn't needed and couldn't really demonstrate their skills.
- gopher_space 5y ago
  How many people will never achieve their potential because they don't work in a room with a door?
jimbokun 5y ago
So the 10x programmer realizes you can accomplish the same goals with 1/10 of the book keeping, dependencies, interfaces etc. etc. etc. In other words, the processes themselves place hard upper limits on the possible productivity.
- closeparen 5y ago
  One could make the argument that skipping the bureaucracy catches up with you in the long run. Or maybe a small team of 10x programmers could really get away with it, indefinitely. But can you reliably staff enough of them, now and forever, to keep that going? For a business it is often better to have a codebase that scales with arbitrarily many average-quality engineers, than to be dependent on hiring miracles. Even small numbers of them.

FlyingAvatar 5y ago

I find this true to an extent, but this also where a lot of unnecessary complexity, risk aversion and process live.

IshKebab 5y ago

Maybe that's why so many people think 10x programmers don't exist - they work in environments where a 10x programmer isn't needed and couldn't really demonstrate their skills.

gopher_space 5y ago
How many people will never achieve their potential because they don't work in a room with a door?

jimbokun 5y ago

So the 10x programmer realizes you can accomplish the same goals with 1/10 of the book keeping, dependencies, interfaces etc. etc. etc. In other words, the processes themselves place hard upper limits on the possible productivity.

closeparen 5y ago
One could make the argument that skipping the bureaucracy catches up with you in the long run. Or maybe a small team of 10x programmers could really get away with it, indefinitely. But can you reliably staff enough of them, now and forever, to keep that going? For a business it is often better to have a codebase that scales with arbitrarily many average-quality engineers, than to be dependent on hiring miracles. Even small numbers of them.