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Anyone who denies the existence of the 10x programmer has either simply not encountered one, or is blinded by their own ego. In my 20 years in industry, I can

Anyone who denies the existence of the 10x programmer has either simply not encountered one, or is blinded by their own ego. In my 20 years in industry, I can think of maybe 10 engineers I've directly worked with who were an order of magnitude above all their peers in terms of both code volume AND quality. These are people who will implement a feature with clean code, well commented, well thought-out and meeting the exact need, correctly structured, in the time that the entire rest of the engineering team would still be scratching their head and debating what to do. One guy years ago who refactored the entire backend at a startup in 2 days, then asked "OK, what can I work on now?" Another guy who wrote an IPC system we needed, which I'd expected would take us 6 weeks, and he did it over the weekend (and it worked perfectly). Another who debugged and patched a critical infrastructure problem in a very complex system, in about 2 days... and would do this time and again, just cranking out features and fixes, week after week. * "Oh, but their code must have been rushed!" It was fast but not rushed. Some of the best code I've seen. * "Oh, but they didn't consider user requirements." They did. * "Oh, they must have been insufferable to work with!" For the most part, super friendly and great teammates. And so on. So, sorry if it offends, but some people are just much better developers than everyone else around them (including, possibly yourself). I was much happier after I realized and accepted this fact!

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beebmam 5y ago
In my 20 years of industry at both small and large tech companies, I couldn't disagree more with you. I'd also appreciate if you toned down the insults.
- khazhoux 5y ago
  It should not be an insult to be told that there are people more skilled than you, though. It is hubris to think otherwise. Are you saying in 20 years, you haven't met any engineers that were head and shoulders noticeably more productive than their peers, in terms of code volume+quality?
  - philosopher1234 5y ago
    There are undoubtedly developers who are 10x more productive. But I doubt its because they are born smarter. There are developers who are 100x more invested in their work, and only 10x more productive.
    - khazhoux 5y ago
      Sure, I don't know if they were "born" smarter. At least one of these people, I got to witness up-close his methodological approach to all his coding work. I don't know if the rest had a specific technique or not. All I know: these guys were all insanely fast, and only very rarely made any coding errors.
      - philosopher1234 5y ago
        I agree with you there. There are certainly much faster, much more dedicated workers. My irritation is with: 1. All the hero worship 2. This idea that they are unreachably superior to everyone else
        khazhoux 5y ago
        I guess I don't see the hero worship. Mention "10x Engineer" around here and people become furious. Unreachably superior? Well, I'll never be as good as these guys I'm thinking of, and probably not even if I doubled down on sharpening my craft. There's lots of factors for that. Maybe they picked up better habits early, maybe I need to drop dumb hobbies. Or maybe, they're just clearer thinkers. Who knows, but I'm OK with it.
    - hnfong 5y ago
      How can developers be "100x more invested in their work"? Assuming the average lazy developer spent 2 years in college learning their craft and 20 hours a week actually working, you're saying the 100x-invested programmer spent 200 years learning about software and 2000 hours a week working? That's an insane claim. How far must people go to be politically correct and to avoid "insulting"(?!) the average person?

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beebmam 5y ago

In my 20 years of industry at both small and large tech companies, I couldn't disagree more with you. I'd also appreciate if you toned down the insults.

khazhoux 5y ago
It should not be an insult to be told that there are people more skilled than you, though. It is hubris to think otherwise. Are you saying in 20 years, you haven't met any engineers that were head and shoulders noticeably more productive than their peers, in terms of code volume+quality?
- philosopher1234 5y ago
  There are undoubtedly developers who are 10x more productive. But I doubt its because they are born smarter. There are developers who are 100x more invested in their work, and only 10x more productive.
  - khazhoux 5y ago
    Sure, I don't know if they were "born" smarter. At least one of these people, I got to witness up-close his methodological approach to all his coding work. I don't know if the rest had a specific technique or not. All I know: these guys were all insanely fast, and only very rarely made any coding errors.
    - philosopher1234 5y ago
      I agree with you there. There are certainly much faster, much more dedicated workers. My irritation is with: 1. All the hero worship 2. This idea that they are unreachably superior to everyone else
      - khazhoux 5y ago
        I guess I don't see the hero worship. Mention "10x Engineer" around here and people become furious. Unreachably superior? Well, I'll never be as good as these guys I'm thinking of, and probably not even if I doubled down on sharpening my craft. There's lots of factors for that. Maybe they picked up better habits early, maybe I need to drop dumb hobbies. Or maybe, they're just clearer thinkers. Who knows, but I'm OK with it.
  - hnfong 5y ago
    How can developers be "100x more invested in their work"? Assuming the average lazy developer spent 2 years in college learning their craft and 20 hours a week actually working, you're saying the 100x-invested programmer spent 200 years learning about software and 2000 hours a week working? That's an insane claim. How far must people go to be politically correct and to avoid "insulting"(?!) the average person?