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People often forget that the 10x guy is 10x only in the domain he’s been working on, and many chores has been taken away from him by his manager and given to so

People often forget that the 10x guy is 10x only in the domain he’s been working on, and many chores has been taken away from him by his manager and given to someone else. It is fairly easy to make a 10x someone closer to a 1x just by changing his tasks and giving more chores like CR, bug fixes, more mundane features or GUI etc. Sure it will often be better quality but in areas where it matters less.

kortilla 5y ago
This is just a redressing of the same “everyone is just as good” bullshit. Some people get a fuckload more work done because they go down the right design paths to start with, know how to work effectively, know what pieces to skip, etc. The same is true in nearly every field. Programming is not special.
- polskibus 5y ago
  I deliberately used “closer to 1x”, but let me respond with an anecdote. I know several people, each working in a different org, who explicitly manage their managers by demanding to work on issues that have good visibility, are not too short >2 weeks but not too long <2-3 months so they are ready before the next review period. This way they are seen from the outside as very good performers while someone else is doing the less appreciated (but still essential) work.
  - silexia 5y ago
    I built and own a company with 200x employees building a wide variety of websites for people. The 10x programmer is real. The 5x salesperson is real. The 20x manager is real.
    - polskibus 5y ago
      Sure they are, I'm arguing that their force multiplier has to be taken with the context they are in, and that the change of the context can reduce the multiplier.
varjag 5y ago
No, some people are a lot more productive across broad range of tasks. Often they are assigned tougher/critical stuff though because it doesn't make sense them do trivial tweaks.
Jensson 5y ago
Ensuring people work on what they are comparatively best at is a feature. 1x engineers would also get a lot less done if they had to clean the toilets and sweep the floor and many of the other low end tasks others do, instead they assign people who cost less to those tasks.
- polskibus 5y ago
  That’s argumentum ad absurdum though. There may well be people that are useless in a given profession, my point was not about that. My point was that 10x occurrence should be analysed within specific project, work division within the team, etc. For most 10x programmers in a project it does not guarantee repetition of 10x on a different type of project or problems. Matching problem with a team member and ensuring he has a chance to become 10x at it is something that good managers do.
kragen 5y ago
Jeff Dean was 10x when he wrote EPI INFO, he was 10x when he worked on profilers at DEC WRL, he was 10x when he and Sanjay Ghemawat wrote MapReduce, and he was 10x when they rewrote Google's search indexer. Maybe 1000x or 10000x, really. It's true that part of that was that he worked on things that mattered instead of things that didn't, and he could have found himself in a situation where he didn't have that opportunity. But it's clearly not just productivity in a single domain, and it's not because someone else was fixing all his bugs.
- Dudeman112 5y ago
  There are statistical outliers in every single thing that has a big enough amount of samples and that it is possible for there to be statistical outliers. Maybe you attract those like flies are attracted to honey, but pointing out that an Einstein existed isn't really helpful for approximately all teams of physicists out there, minus one or two teams I'm not even saying there isn't a huge quality variance in the regular pool of programmers, mind you. Just that pointing out the existence of bad motherfuckers in a population of a few million people shouldn't come as a surprise.
  - varjag 5y ago
    The proverbial '10x developer' is by definition an outlier tho yet people never stop arguing they don't exist.
    - Dudeman112 5y ago
      I'd wager that has something to do with jumping the shark. People feel the need to chat about 10x developers when they don't even agree what a 1x developer is, and when they do present a definition, that definition is a function of (company, team, project, existing code base) which means there are more possible instances of 1x developers than the amount of developers who have ever lived. Everyone is better off if they just ditch the "10x" which has connotations that programming nerds will latch on to and just use "highly performant dudes".
    - kragen 5y ago
jseban 5y ago
Well, he became 10x in the domain, and the other did not become 10x, it's not like he was born with this knowledge, he just took it more seriously and went deeper
crispyambulance 5y ago
I think people also don't realize that high-performers weren't always high-performers. They had to hone their skills, usually by doing years of the right kind of challenging work with modest rewards, and sometimes they can be formed by exceptional mentoring. But however they got there it took time, it's something that can be cultivated as long as folks aren't treated as fungible.
- PeterisP 5y ago
  I disagree, the few really high-performers that I have worked with were high-performers already from the first week with a new technology, from the first month in their first job, and already as a student during practical work they were more productive than most people who had many years of challenging work behind them. Experience is important and adds up, honing the skills makes everyone better, but it's orthogonal to this issue; there are people that will very quickly outperform someone who has honed their skills for years, and once they have honed their skills in that domain they might perhaps start outperforming them by the mythical 10x ratio.
  - crispyambulance 5y ago
    I guess it depends on how one defines 10x or "high performer". Prodigies and maestro's will always be few and far in-between, is that what is meant by 10x? I don't know. But given the relative abundance of 10x'ers anecdotes in discussions in places like HN, I always just take that term to mean "really good" or perhaps just fuzzy romanticizing-- and not literally able to do the work of 10x "mortals".

kortilla 5y ago

This is just a redressing of the same “everyone is just as good” bullshit. Some people get a fuckload more work done because they go down the right design paths to start with, know how to work effectively, know what pieces to skip, etc. The same is true in nearly every field. Programming is not special.

polskibus 5y ago
I deliberately used “closer to 1x”, but let me respond with an anecdote. I know several people, each working in a different org, who explicitly manage their managers by demanding to work on issues that have good visibility, are not too short >2 weeks but not too long <2-3 months so they are ready before the next review period. This way they are seen from the outside as very good performers while someone else is doing the less appreciated (but still essential) work.
- silexia 5y ago
  I built and own a company with 200x employees building a wide variety of websites for people. The 10x programmer is real. The 5x salesperson is real. The 20x manager is real.
  - polskibus 5y ago
    Sure they are, I'm arguing that their force multiplier has to be taken with the context they are in, and that the change of the context can reduce the multiplier.

varjag 5y ago

No, some people are a lot more productive across broad range of tasks. Often they are assigned tougher/critical stuff though because it doesn't make sense them do trivial tweaks.

Jensson 5y ago

Ensuring people work on what they are comparatively best at is a feature. 1x engineers would also get a lot less done if they had to clean the toilets and sweep the floor and many of the other low end tasks others do, instead they assign people who cost less to those tasks.

polskibus 5y ago
That’s argumentum ad absurdum though. There may well be people that are useless in a given profession, my point was not about that. My point was that 10x occurrence should be analysed within specific project, work division within the team, etc. For most 10x programmers in a project it does not guarantee repetition of 10x on a different type of project or problems. Matching problem with a team member and ensuring he has a chance to become 10x at it is something that good managers do.

kragen 5y ago

Jeff Dean was 10x when he wrote EPI INFO, he was 10x when he worked on profilers at DEC WRL, he was 10x when he and Sanjay Ghemawat wrote MapReduce, and he was 10x when they rewrote Google's search indexer. Maybe 1000x or 10000x, really. It's true that part of that was that he worked on things that mattered instead of things that didn't, and he could have found himself in a situation where he didn't have that opportunity. But it's clearly not just productivity in a single domain, and it's not because someone else was fixing all his bugs.

Dudeman112 5y ago
There are statistical outliers in every single thing that has a big enough amount of samples and that it is possible for there to be statistical outliers. Maybe you attract those like flies are attracted to honey, but pointing out that an Einstein existed isn't really helpful for approximately all teams of physicists out there, minus one or two teams I'm not even saying there isn't a huge quality variance in the regular pool of programmers, mind you. Just that pointing out the existence of bad motherfuckers in a population of a few million people shouldn't come as a surprise.
- varjag 5y ago
  The proverbial '10x developer' is by definition an outlier tho yet people never stop arguing they don't exist.
  - Dudeman112 5y ago
    I'd wager that has something to do with jumping the shark. People feel the need to chat about 10x developers when they don't even agree what a 1x developer is, and when they do present a definition, that definition is a function of (company, team, project, existing code base) which means there are more possible instances of 1x developers than the amount of developers who have ever lived. Everyone is better off if they just ditch the "10x" which has connotations that programming nerds will latch on to and just use "highly performant dudes".
  - kragen 5y ago

jseban 5y ago

Well, he became 10x in the domain, and the other did not become 10x, it's not like he was born with this knowledge, he just took it more seriously and went deeper

crispyambulance 5y ago

I think people also don't realize that high-performers weren't always high-performers. They had to hone their skills, usually by doing years of the right kind of challenging work with modest rewards, and sometimes they can be formed by exceptional mentoring. But however they got there it took time, it's something that can be cultivated as long as folks aren't treated as fungible.

PeterisP 5y ago
I disagree, the few really high-performers that I have worked with were high-performers already from the first week with a new technology, from the first month in their first job, and already as a student during practical work they were more productive than most people who had many years of challenging work behind them. Experience is important and adds up, honing the skills makes everyone better, but it's orthogonal to this issue; there are people that will very quickly outperform someone who has honed their skills for years, and once they have honed their skills in that domain they might perhaps start outperforming them by the mythical 10x ratio.
- crispyambulance 5y ago
  I guess it depends on how one defines 10x or "high performer". Prodigies and maestro's will always be few and far in-between, is that what is meant by 10x? I don't know. But given the relative abundance of 10x'ers anecdotes in discussions in places like HN, I always just take that term to mean "really good" or perhaps just fuzzy romanticizing-- and not literally able to do the work of 10x "mortals".