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Jobs where the difference in output between the best and worst is 10x. Generally creative professions like movie director, writer/journalist, lawyer, etc. SWE t
by ceeplusplus 4y ago
Jobs where the difference in output between the best and worst is 10x. Generally creative professions like movie director, writer/journalist, lawyer, etc. SWE tends to fall into this category because the difficulty of writing good code is in some respects like writing good prose: the space of "solutions" is vast and there are few well defined rules by which a "good" solution can be constructed. Not only that, but writing it quickly while maintaining quality is difficult as well.
See for example this blog by Joel Spolsky [1].
[1] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/07/25/hitting-the-high-notes/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/07/25/hitting-the-high-n...
- f6v 4y agoSomething software engineers came up with to feel exceptional. There’re great people in most professions, but this “10x” concept is completely subjective and not quantifiable.
- ceeplusplus 4y agoThe link provides empirical data backing up the idea of 10x, specifically in the context of the speed and quality with which students come up with solutions to a programming project. Quality is measured by correctness and speed by time spent. It also provides data showing that speed and correctness are essentially uncorrelated between different people - i.e. just because two different people finish at different speeds, does not mean the faster person has a less correct solution, at least in this specific setting. If you assume that's true generally, that makes the idea that there is a large gap between F500 programmers and FAANG ones even more credible, since the best programmers both produce better solutions and produce them faster.