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I've worked with hundreds of engineers in my career, and was lucky enough to have worked with probably a dozen or so that could qualify as a 10x developer. The

I've worked with hundreds of engineers in my career, and was lucky enough to have worked with probably a dozen or so that could qualify as a 10x developer. The premise of a 10x developer is not that they work at 10x the velocity of a 1x engineer. If the average velocity per engineer on a team is 10 story points per sprint, a 10x developer is not going to complete 100 story points in the same sprint. That's impossible. Instead, the 10x engineer will increase the overall velocity and code quality of an entire team, which could manifest as an additional 90 story points of velocity in a given sprint (if you can objectively compare story point quality across sprints). If you pair a decent PM with a team of 8 junior-to-average engineers, the PM will have a roadmap that they can track towards with some level of granularity but will likely not be able to guarantee quality of the product and achieve reasonable timelines. If you add a single 10x engineer to that team, the entire team will step up because 1) they can learn from someone and are motivated to do a good job, 2) they become more intellectually stimulated because they have someone they can bounce high-level ideas off of and actually get good answers, and 3) there's an implicit trust of having someone who is so much better than you telling you how things should be done and expecting you to step up and do it. My best experience was working on a team as the sole PM with 15 engineers, 3 of whom were considered 10x engineers. As a result, we brought in engineers from other parts of the company who were considered average at best, and turned them into high-performing "5x" engineers. We did that about a dozen times over the course of 2 years.

jacobyoder 4y ago
> If the average velocity per engineer on a team is 10 story points per sprint, a 10x developer is not going to complete 100 story points in the same sprint. That's impossible. Is it? We had a sprint in march. Estimated 60 story points, arguably split between 4 people. Around 48(?) points got done, and I did 32 of them. The other 3 people each did around 20% of what I did. 3 of us were only part time on that project (~20 hrs per week). Now, with that said... it was somewhat an edge case. That differential existed for a long time, and I kept it going for months (close to a year, honestly), but burned out. One of the biggest (expressed) concerns I had was "if we hit all this, they'll just keep adding more". And... that's what happened. Along the way ... I was growing more and more irritable - the pressure, the meeting pace, the public front to the client vs the under-the-hood realities, the constant feeling of letting everyone else down if I didn't finish everything... I pulled back my time/commitment some, and that feeling got worse, because no one actually pulled back any goals/commitments, just... more public "yes, things are great, everything will be fine, all goals will be met!" and a growing increase in stuff not getting done. > If you add a single 10x engineer to that team, the entire team will step up because 1) they can learn from someone and are motivated to do a good job, 2) they become more intellectually stimulated because they have someone they can bounce high-level ideas off of and actually get good answers, and 3) there's an implicit trust of having someone who is so much better than you telling you how things should be done and expecting you to step up and do it. The team would actually want to learn and get better. Some will and some won't. I've seen it go both ways in the past 20 years. The people have to want it, and the org needs to have an actual plan in place to support that goal.

jacobyoder 4y ago

> If the average velocity per engineer on a team is 10 story points per sprint, a 10x developer is not going to complete 100 story points in the same sprint. That's impossible. Is it? We had a sprint in march. Estimated 60 story points, arguably split between 4 people. Around 48(?) points got done, and I did 32 of them. The other 3 people each did around 20% of what I did. 3 of us were only part time on that project (~20 hrs per week). Now, with that said... it was somewhat an edge case. That differential existed for a long time, and I kept it going for months (close to a year, honestly), but burned out. One of the biggest (expressed) concerns I had was "if we hit all this, they'll just keep adding more". And... that's what happened. Along the way ... I was growing more and more irritable - the pressure, the meeting pace, the public front to the client vs the under-the-hood realities, the constant feeling of letting everyone else down if I didn't finish everything... I pulled back my time/commitment some, and that feeling got worse, because no one actually pulled back any goals/commitments, just... more public "yes, things are great, everything will be fine, all goals will be met!" and a growing increase in stuff not getting done. > If you add a single 10x engineer to that team, the entire team will step up because 1) they can learn from someone and are motivated to do a good job, 2) they become more intellectually stimulated because they have someone they can bounce high-level ideas off of and actually get good answers, and 3) there's an implicit trust of having someone who is so much better than you telling you how things should be done and expecting you to step up and do it. The team would actually want to learn and get better. Some will and some won't. I've seen it go both ways in the past 20 years. The people have to want it, and the org needs to have an actual plan in place to support that goal.