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Thought experiment: would a junior developer armed with a modern day gpt-5.5 or opus 4.8 in 2015 would have been considered a 10x developer (assuming nobody kne

Thought experiment: would a junior developer armed with a modern day gpt-5.5 or opus 4.8 in 2015 would have been considered a 10x developer (assuming nobody knew they were using AI)?

ath3nd 4mo ago
[dead]
xigoi 4mo ago
Depends on whether they have one of the bosses that judge employees’ quality by the number of lines written.
MadxX79 4mo ago
If you want to play games like that, you could also flip it around and ask if the AI would have been eventually fired (assuming no one knew they were talking to a computer). Not sure what that proves.
cyberge99 4mo ago
No. I experienced this firsthand. Brought on a on level dev who was using Ai. Created slop, when asked how it works, he just said “it’s all in the documentation” Lots of good documentation, but that’s bot what I needed. I needed an engineer that understood and knew what he created. I’m no longer at that org.
godelski 4mo ago
> considered a 10x developer The 10x developer never existed. You're telling me these people are doing a year's worth of work in 1.2 months? Seriously?! 10x?! In a year you can probably learn to program from scratch and participle if you're working 8hrs per day 5 days a week We need to stop exaggerating so much. A 2x dev would be insane! A 1.5x dev does a year's work in 8. A 1.1x dev does it in 11. Saving a whole month itself is a massive amount of money saving. Our "10x" devs are really 1.1x and I'm not sure why we see that as anything less than wildly impressive. Can we stop exaggerating so much?
- Veserv 4mo ago
  Of course they do. Have you literally never run into a problem that the average developer can not solve, but a expert can solve? That is infinity times more productive. Even assuming that maybe the average developer could come to learn how to solve the problem you can easily see the gap between taking months to learn how to solve a problem versus already knowing how to solve it on short notice being over 10x. Large productivity differences are mostly a function of differences in capability than differences of speed in solving rote problems easily within their capabilitys.
  - godelski 4mo ago
    > Have you literally never run into a problem that the average developer can not solve, but a expert can solve? In what time frame? > Even assuming that maybe the average developer could come to learn ... already knowing how to solve it on short notice being over 10x. 10x? I'm not convinced. 10x is a pretty big increase, as illustrated above. Clearly I understand the gap, I explicitly mentioned it. I mentioned a month's work is quite valuable. I'm not the one diminishing that value, you are. I can totally buy instances of 10x improvement, but that's not what we're talking about and not how anyone is using the term. Everyone is talking about sustained output. No one gives a shit if you're 100x for five minutes but 0.5x the rest of the time. Your critique isn't wrong, per say, but it is a non sequitur to the conversation. I doubt even a staff level engineer is even a 10x above the junior. Will the staff level engineer write better code and faster? Hell yeah they will! But will it take a junior 10 years to write the same software a staff level does in a year? Maybe. But if it does I'm not convinced they're even trying, so not a fair comparison. 10 years is a lot of time. A lot of time to learn, refactor, or even build the damn thing from scratch a few dozen times. Seriously, 10x improvements are actually wild. But why dismiss a 10% gain as if it's nothing? Why is the smaller number bad? Is the need for the number to go up so strong that we don't care how divorced from reality it is?
    - Jensson 4mo ago
      > I doubt even a staff level engineer is even a 10x above the junior Its not about staff vs junior, its about smart vs dumb programmers. You don't get smarter with time, you just gain more experience.

Thought experiment: would a junior developer armed with a modern day gpt-5.5 or opus 4.8 in 2015 would have been considered a 10x developer (assuming nobody knew they were using AI)?

ath3nd 4mo ago

[dead]

xigoi 4mo ago

Depends on whether they have one of the bosses that judge employees’ quality by the number of lines written.

MadxX79 4mo ago

If you want to play games like that, you could also flip it around and ask if the AI would have been eventually fired (assuming no one knew they were talking to a computer). Not sure what that proves.

cyberge99 4mo ago

No. I experienced this firsthand. Brought on a on level dev who was using Ai. Created slop, when asked how it works, he just said “it’s all in the documentation” Lots of good documentation, but that’s bot what I needed. I needed an engineer that understood and knew what he created. I’m no longer at that org.

godelski 4mo ago

> considered a 10x developer The 10x developer never existed. You're telling me these people are doing a year's worth of work in 1.2 months? Seriously?! 10x?! In a year you can probably learn to program from scratch and participle if you're working 8hrs per day 5 days a week We need to stop exaggerating so much. A 2x dev would be insane! A 1.5x dev does a year's work in 8. A 1.1x dev does it in 11. Saving a whole month itself is a massive amount of money saving. Our "10x" devs are really 1.1x and I'm not sure why we see that as anything less than wildly impressive. Can we stop exaggerating so much?

Veserv 4mo ago
Of course they do. Have you literally never run into a problem that the average developer can not solve, but a expert can solve? That is infinity times more productive. Even assuming that maybe the average developer could come to learn how to solve the problem you can easily see the gap between taking months to learn how to solve a problem versus already knowing how to solve it on short notice being over 10x. Large productivity differences are mostly a function of differences in capability than differences of speed in solving rote problems easily within their capabilitys.
- godelski 4mo ago
  > Have you literally never run into a problem that the average developer can not solve, but a expert can solve? In what time frame? > Even assuming that maybe the average developer could come to learn ... already knowing how to solve it on short notice being over 10x. 10x? I'm not convinced. 10x is a pretty big increase, as illustrated above. Clearly I understand the gap, I explicitly mentioned it. I mentioned a month's work is quite valuable. I'm not the one diminishing that value, you are. I can totally buy instances of 10x improvement, but that's not what we're talking about and not how anyone is using the term. Everyone is talking about sustained output. No one gives a shit if you're 100x for five minutes but 0.5x the rest of the time. Your critique isn't wrong, per say, but it is a non sequitur to the conversation. I doubt even a staff level engineer is even a 10x above the junior. Will the staff level engineer write better code and faster? Hell yeah they will! But will it take a junior 10 years to write the same software a staff level does in a year? Maybe. But if it does I'm not convinced they're even trying, so not a fair comparison. 10 years is a lot of time. A lot of time to learn, refactor, or even build the damn thing from scratch a few dozen times. Seriously, 10x improvements are actually wild. But why dismiss a 10% gain as if it's nothing? Why is the smaller number bad? Is the need for the number to go up so strong that we don't care how divorced from reality it is?
  - Jensson 4mo ago
    > I doubt even a staff level engineer is even a 10x above the junior Its not about staff vs junior, its about smart vs dumb programmers. You don't get smarter with time, you just gain more experience.