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I think folks miss the point when thinking about 10x devs. The point is that there are some folks out there that can do the work of entire teams or entire compa

I think folks miss the point when thinking about 10x devs. The point is that there are some folks out there that can do the work of entire teams or entire companies. When you have a team you have hours long sync meetings, communication lag, and middle managers. A single capable individual doesn't need any of that. The tradeoff is that the resulting code might be unmaintainable in practice. Minecraft is a great example. Notch wrote the complete game largely by himself (with one or two other folks), but now that it's managed by a team and owned by a megacorp, it's effectively rewritten. With 100x more people is it 100x better? Probably not

deleted 4y ago
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ozim 4y ago
I am sorry but I just get annoyed reading opinions on what 10x means. See for yourself by how much you miss. Read the quote from Fred Brooks work: *Programming managers have long recognized wide productivity variations between good programmers and poor ones. But the actual measured magnitudes have astounded all of us. In one of their studies, Sackman, Erikson, and Grant were measuring perfor- mances of a group of experienced programmers. Within just this group the ratios between best and worst performances averaged about 10:1 on productivity measurements and an amazing 5:1 on program speed and space measurements! In short the $20,000/year programmer may well be 10 times as productive as the $10,000/year one. The converse may be true, too. The data showed no correlation whatsoever between experience and per- formance. (I doubt if that is universally true.)*
- Ensorceled 4y ago
  > I am sorry but I just get annoyed reading opinions on what 10x means. There are literally people redefining it in this thread: > 10x = It takes 10 people to clear the mess they left behind. > All you need for the myth to be true are a few programmers who will take 10 times longer than necessary to complete a task.
fhd2 4y ago
That's what's described in The Mythical Man Month at some lengths. No matter what the process, there's communication overhead that increases somewhat exponentially with team size, which means you get diminishing returns from adding more devs at some point. A solo developer is in my experience always insanely productive compared to a team, as long as it's not a junior at least. But there's still a team size at which the larger team breaks even and can be more productive - plus you have a better bus factor. If you want to go fast, do it alone. If you want to go far, do it together. Unfortunately, I've seen a number of self proclaimed 10x programmers act completely uncollaborative to put themselves in the solo developer situation, outperforming teams of ~5. If management can't recognise what's happening there - they pay someone more than the others to effectively hurt the company.

deleted 4y ago

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ozim 4y ago

I am sorry but I just get annoyed reading opinions on what 10x means. See for yourself by how much you miss. Read the quote from Fred Brooks work: *Programming managers have long recognized wide productivity variations between good programmers and poor ones. But the actual measured magnitudes have astounded all of us. In one of their studies, Sackman, Erikson, and Grant were measuring perfor- mances of a group of experienced programmers. Within just this group the ratios between best and worst performances averaged about 10:1 on productivity measurements and an amazing 5:1 on program speed and space measurements! In short the $20,000/year programmer may well be 10 times as productive as the $10,000/year one. The converse may be true, too. The data showed no correlation whatsoever between experience and per- formance. (I doubt if that is universally true.)*

Ensorceled 4y ago
> I am sorry but I just get annoyed reading opinions on what 10x means. There are literally people redefining it in this thread: > 10x = It takes 10 people to clear the mess they left behind. > All you need for the myth to be true are a few programmers who will take 10 times longer than necessary to complete a task.

fhd2 4y ago

That's what's described in The Mythical Man Month at some lengths. No matter what the process, there's communication overhead that increases somewhat exponentially with team size, which means you get diminishing returns from adding more devs at some point. A solo developer is in my experience always insanely productive compared to a team, as long as it's not a junior at least. But there's still a team size at which the larger team breaks even and can be more productive - plus you have a better bus factor. If you want to go fast, do it alone. If you want to go far, do it together. Unfortunately, I've seen a number of self proclaimed 10x programmers act completely uncollaborative to put themselves in the solo developer situation, outperforming teams of ~5. If management can't recognise what's happening there - they pay someone more than the others to effectively hurt the company.