Roughly speaking, it represents the transition from an adder to a multiplier. A 1.0 programmer is competent at "adder" tasks (scripts, bug fixes, features) but

Roughly speaking, it represents the transition from an adder to a multiplier. A 1.0 programmer is competent at "adder" tasks (scripts, bug fixes, features) but not yet ready for infrastructural work. A 2.0 programmer is highly competent as a multiplier. It goes from 0.0 (complete beginner) to 3.0 (global multiplier) but most (probably 99%) professional software engineers are between 0.8 and 2.2, with a median around 1.1-1.2. This is more up to date than nostrademons's link:http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/04/22/gervais-macleod-23-the-shodan-programmer/ http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/04/22/gervais-macle... Also, from Quora: http://www.quora.com/What-do-the-top-1-of-software-engineers-do-that-the-other-99-do-not/answer/Michael-O-Church http://www.quora.com/What-do-the-top-1-of-software-engineers...