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N=1, I worked with a guy who was at least 10 times as productive as any other programmer I’ve ever met. He was also incapable of delegating, compromising, or

N=1, I worked with a guy who was at least 10 times as productive as any other programmer I’ve ever met. He was also incapable of delegating, compromising, or cooperating with others. I’ve got a lot of life experience dealing with difficult personalities, and am sympathetic to an extent, so he and I were able to come to a mutual understanding, but it led to deep rifts and dysfunctions in the team that hurt our ability to deliver on product objectives as a whole. He has moved on, but most of his remaining code is (sometimes unfairly) treated as “dragons” territory. Some organizations are able to accommodate people like this effectively, but the organization has to be set up for that. EDIT: The only other engineer that I would consider a “superstar” that I have encountered was nowhere near as prolific as the person above, but had an ability to make any project go smoothly. He was technically excellent, but also had the soft skills to help people converge on good solutions and motivate people to contribute. So, N=2.

somethoughts 5y ago
Agreed! I don't doubt there are some 10x programmers that are able to pump out features that check off every box that biz dev wants while simultaneously creating code that is understandable and supportable by the rest of the team. But for every 10x programmer that does this there are many more programmers that are able to pump out features that check off every box that biz dev wants but are creating code that is only understandable to them using their preferred abstractions/libraries/variable naming conventions/etc and unintentionally (or sometimes intentionally) only supportable by them. This makes them look super productive and 10x-y versus their team members but leads to long term resentment amongst team members and high bus factor loads for the company on that individual that are not apparent to biz dev.

somethoughts 5y ago

Agreed! I don't doubt there are some 10x programmers that are able to pump out features that check off every box that biz dev wants while simultaneously creating code that is understandable and supportable by the rest of the team. But for every 10x programmer that does this there are many more programmers that are able to pump out features that check off every box that biz dev wants but are creating code that is only understandable to them using their preferred abstractions/libraries/variable naming conventions/etc and unintentionally (or sometimes intentionally) only supportable by them. This makes them look super productive and 10x-y versus their team members but leads to long term resentment amongst team members and high bus factor loads for the company on that individual that are not apparent to biz dev.