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I wanted to reply to all the comments so I just decided to reply to my own comment. For those telling me I'm misinterpreting what a 10x dev is, I don't think a

I wanted to reply to all the comments so I just decided to reply to my own comment. For those telling me I'm misinterpreting what a 10x dev is, I don't think a solid definition of the 10x developer actually exists it's mostly in the eye of the beholder. I think it's mostly in what other people think of them especially that guy that hands out raises. So it's incredibly subjective. I say a 10x developer is someone that can create features 10x faster than everyone else, regardless of their other skills. To be clear my dream rockstart software engineer is not a 10x developer. They are 5x developer, a 5x Team player, 5x architect and 10x Mentor. So maybe we need a dictionary of terms around what people by various nicknames and concepts given to the various kinds of software developers.

dasil003 12y ago
I agree everyone has their own definition, but the one you are giving is a pointy-haired definition, where the only metric is LoC and a successful demo of some feature. Even though it's hard to measure a lot of things like technical debt, architectural benefits, bugs, edge case handling, UX polish, teamwork, etc, it doesn't mean that you can reasonably get away with discounting those effects when you talk about 10x. The 10x is referring to productivity, which is implicitly a net measure (gross productivity is just activity, and no one willingly pays for that). So yeah, you can be 10x in terms of cranking out working code a lot faster (rare), but if that is blowing other people up then it's not meaningful to say they are more productive, in fact it's extremely harmful to risk putting them on a pedestal like this in front of clueless management. For me, true 10x is more intangible than cranking out functionality, it's more about the ability to reconcile the details with the big picture, and zeroing in on solutions that solve the most problems and create the fewest. How this actually looks in practice varies from project to project, but I think it rarely correlates with sustaining a 200wpm typing speed for 8 hours a day.
- tenpoundhammer 12y ago
  I'm going to quote this on my blog, I love everythin about this comment.
  - dasil003 12y ago
    Wow thanks, let me know where your blog is.
    - tenpoundhammer 12y ago
      impressmyself.co , It probably won't be up until next week sometime though. I have to figure how I want to write the blog post, and then actually do it.

dasil003 12y ago

I agree everyone has their own definition, but the one you are giving is a pointy-haired definition, where the only metric is LoC and a successful demo of some feature. Even though it's hard to measure a lot of things like technical debt, architectural benefits, bugs, edge case handling, UX polish, teamwork, etc, it doesn't mean that you can reasonably get away with discounting those effects when you talk about 10x. The 10x is referring to productivity, which is implicitly a net measure (gross productivity is just activity, and no one willingly pays for that). So yeah, you can be 10x in terms of cranking out working code a lot faster (rare), but if that is blowing other people up then it's not meaningful to say they are more productive, in fact it's extremely harmful to risk putting them on a pedestal like this in front of clueless management. For me, true 10x is more intangible than cranking out functionality, it's more about the ability to reconcile the details with the big picture, and zeroing in on solutions that solve the most problems and create the fewest. How this actually looks in practice varies from project to project, but I think it rarely correlates with sustaining a 200wpm typing speed for 8 hours a day.

tenpoundhammer 12y ago
I'm going to quote this on my blog, I love everythin about this comment.
- dasil003 12y ago
  Wow thanks, let me know where your blog is.
  - tenpoundhammer 12y ago
    impressmyself.co , It probably won't be up until next week sometime though. I have to figure how I want to write the blog post, and then actually do it.