The original study was timing how fast developers could solve a given task. The slowest took 10x the time of the fastest. With this setup you can't really get n

The original study was timing how fast developers could solve a given task. The slowest took 10x the time of the fastest. With this setup you can't really get negative results. And participants who didn't finish the task were excluded from the results. A summary of the research: https://www.construx.com/blog/productivity-variations-among-software-developers-and-teams-the-origin-of-10x/ https://www.construx.com/blog/productivity-variations-among-... I don't think there is anything wrong with the math, it is just that real-world productivity is not as easy to measure. The study didn't measure the "maintainability" of the resulting solutions, only how fast they were completed.