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I think Jacob is engaging in sloppy thinking. Like everything relating to biology (in particular, human beings) there are two components. One is nature. One is

I think Jacob is engaging in sloppy thinking. Like everything relating to biology (in particular, human beings) there are two components. One is nature. One is nurture. Every single activity in life will require both components to come together. Everyone will have different aspects and amounts of these components. It reminds me of Jane Elliot's teachings. It's not that 'there is no difference'. There is definitely a difference. The truth is that difference is good. It's good that we have both good and bad programmers. It's good that some people are rockstars, and others have to struggle. Diversity is good. The problem is not "the 10x myth". I don't think its a myth. I think there are 10x althletes, 10x doctors, 10x engineers. Pick any field and the spread between the best and worst performers will be enormous. The real problem is some people think that because they are a better programmer (or a better pianist, or athlete, or engineer, or doctor) they are better people. That their life somehow has greater meaning. This is the myth that needs to be debunked. Being a 10x programmer does not make you a better person. In ANY way, what-so-ever. It just makes you a better programmer. What makes you a better person, in my opinion, is how compassionate you are, how much you care for the less fortunate and how much you work to make this world a better place for everyone.

collyw 11y ago
Sadly I would say the same applies to money, many high earners seem to think that it makes them better people, when often it seems to be the opposite. I also think there are 10x environments that allow you to thrive as a programmer, as I have personally found my workplace to allow me to be around 4-5 times more productive on a quiet day when I am allowed to focus, over a normal day with constant interruptions. Add in some people you could learn from and I could easily see 10x productivity gains from one environment to the next.
NhanH 11y ago
The problem about 10x myth seems to be the comparison point that each of us is making: is it the best vs worst, best vs average, or a binary threshold between the best vs everyone else? And then even defining the "worst" seems to be very hard for a field like programming. And a bit of a tangent, I don't disagree with your last statement in the specific. But in principle, that's a very dangerous statement to make: if you're living within the moral constraint of a society, there really should NOT be any criteria that define a human to be a better or worse person.
- retrogradeorbit 11y ago
  I think we probably agree more than disagree, but I do disagree with your last sentence. This right and wrong is above the 'moral constraint of a society'. A whole society can believe something is right, and another thing is wrong, but that does not make them right and wrong. For example, a majority of a society may believe that honour killings are right. But they are not. It's not some moral relativism that depends on the context. Right and wrong are absolutes, and can be objectively appraised. And here's the metric: Suffering. Right actions are those actions that lead to a reduction in the suffering of living things. Both in others and in ourselves. Wrong actions are those actions that lead to an increase in suffering in ourselves or others. This is how we can appraise our actions. This is totally off topic, and I'm definitely showing my Buddhist beliefs, but I think the attitude shown by your last sentence is held by a lot of people in society. And I think it is also muddled thinking. This kind of 'moral relativity' is actually a slippery slope and has been used to justify all manner of human atrocities through history.
glyph 11y ago
It is a myth though, regardless of whether you, personally, believe it to be or not. It's based almost entirely on a very old study, conducted in a very limited environment, cited by Fred Brooks in “The Mythical Man Month” and then taken further and further out of context. As Jacob points out in his talk, we don’t really have any compelling reason to believe we know how to measure programming productivity, so we don’t have good data. In the absence of good data, we have to assume that the null hypothesis is that programming is like literally every other skill out there. And, no, there are not ”10x atheletes”, we know what the skill distribution is for atheletes, there is a tremendous amount of publicly available statistical data available on athletes, and, again, as Jacob points out in his talk, their skills fall on a normal distribution just like every other kind of skill out there. So, there are outliers, which is what I think you mean by "10x atheletes", but those outliers are just that: outliers. And we do not have good metrics for determining who they are in the software industry, currently.

collyw 11y ago

Sadly I would say the same applies to money, many high earners seem to think that it makes them better people, when often it seems to be the opposite. I also think there are 10x environments that allow you to thrive as a programmer, as I have personally found my workplace to allow me to be around 4-5 times more productive on a quiet day when I am allowed to focus, over a normal day with constant interruptions. Add in some people you could learn from and I could easily see 10x productivity gains from one environment to the next.

NhanH 11y ago

The problem about 10x myth seems to be the comparison point that each of us is making: is it the best vs worst, best vs average, or a binary threshold between the best vs everyone else? And then even defining the "worst" seems to be very hard for a field like programming. And a bit of a tangent, I don't disagree with your last statement in the specific. But in principle, that's a very dangerous statement to make: if you're living within the moral constraint of a society, there really should NOT be any criteria that define a human to be a better or worse person.

retrogradeorbit 11y ago
I think we probably agree more than disagree, but I do disagree with your last sentence. This right and wrong is above the 'moral constraint of a society'. A whole society can believe something is right, and another thing is wrong, but that does not make them right and wrong. For example, a majority of a society may believe that honour killings are right. But they are not. It's not some moral relativism that depends on the context. Right and wrong are absolutes, and can be objectively appraised. And here's the metric: Suffering. Right actions are those actions that lead to a reduction in the suffering of living things. Both in others and in ourselves. Wrong actions are those actions that lead to an increase in suffering in ourselves or others. This is how we can appraise our actions. This is totally off topic, and I'm definitely showing my Buddhist beliefs, but I think the attitude shown by your last sentence is held by a lot of people in society. And I think it is also muddled thinking. This kind of 'moral relativity' is actually a slippery slope and has been used to justify all manner of human atrocities through history.

glyph 11y ago

It is a myth though, regardless of whether you, personally, believe it to be or not. It's based almost entirely on a very old study, conducted in a very limited environment, cited by Fred Brooks in “The Mythical Man Month” and then taken further and further out of context. As Jacob points out in his talk, we don’t really have any compelling reason to believe we know how to measure programming productivity, so we don’t have good data. In the absence of good data, we have to assume that the null hypothesis is that programming is like literally every other skill out there. And, no, there are not ”10x atheletes”, we know what the skill distribution is for atheletes, there is a tremendous amount of publicly available statistical data available on athletes, and, again, as Jacob points out in his talk, their skills fall on a normal distribution just like every other kind of skill out there. So, there are outliers, which is what I think you mean by "10x atheletes", but those outliers are just that: outliers. And we do not have good metrics for determining who they are in the software industry, currently.