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The problem is that it's reductionist. A CTO's productivity on a side project could be enabled by good on-call engineers, a CEO and board who don't demand 80 ho

by strken 4y ago

The problem is that it's reductionist. A CTO's productivity on a side project could be enabled by good on-call engineers, a CEO and board who don't demand 80 hours a week of work, a home situation that's stable and supportive, or a lot of other things. Transfer Evan Wallace to a company that doesn't fit him, give him some really dumb KPIs, and his productivity would drop (briefly, until he quit). Fix the personal and professional environment of the employee who can't do for loops and their productivity might rise. The idea of a 0.1x developer, 1x developer, and 10x developer sitting frozen in amber beside each other, ungrowing and unchanging, never responding to their work environment, always at fault or worthy of praise for any differences in personal productivity, is ridiculous.

eloff 4y ago
You're building up a strawman and then knocking out down. Obviously people perform differently depending on what things they have to overcome, and people also have good and bad days. For the purposes of my argument, it didn't matter why differences exist, it just matters that there are differences.
- strken 4y ago
  My problem with the label is twofold: it blames individuals for systemic problems, and it suggests 10x is some immutable trait. You said that there's a 10x difference between the best and worst member of your team, in response to a post saying that the concept of 10x developers is hard to take seriously. I assumed this meant you thought calling the best member a 10x developer was a good idea, which is what I disagree with. Are you saying that calling people 10x developers is not a good idea, but there's still a 10x or greater difference between the productivity of the highest performers and lowest performers within a single team when observed over a couple of years? I agree, but that argument's a very strange one in the context of the post it was responding to.

by strken 4y ago

eloff 4y ago

You're building up a strawman and then knocking out down. Obviously people perform differently depending on what things they have to overcome, and people also have good and bad days. For the purposes of my argument, it didn't matter why differences exist, it just matters that there are differences.

strken 4y ago
My problem with the label is twofold: it blames individuals for systemic problems, and it suggests 10x is some immutable trait. You said that there's a 10x difference between the best and worst member of your team, in response to a post saying that the concept of 10x developers is hard to take seriously. I assumed this meant you thought calling the best member a 10x developer was a good idea, which is what I disagree with. Are you saying that calling people 10x developers is not a good idea, but there's still a 10x or greater difference between the productivity of the highest performers and lowest performers within a single team when observed over a couple of years? I agree, but that argument's a very strange one in the context of the post it was responding to.