...And they say 10x engineers are a myth.
replies(8):
Never understood that mindset, when I see 100x engineering feats like TempleOS or αcτµαlly pδrταblε εxεcµταblεs it inspires me to learn more and think outside the box.
This results in (c) calling a whole lot of average programmers they hired as 10x programmers because of (a). After all, they are smart and their interview process is infallible.
So, if you meet one of those rare folks, enjoy the intellectual banter :).
The real heroes are the ones who make everyone else look better. But some managers only figure out who that is when they quit or when the business lays off the wrong guy because Steve produces less than Sarah, but that’s because Steve is helping people all the time, including Sarah.
Part of the problem with the myth is that as originally formulated it’s meant to be between your worst and best engineer, and whoever came up with that idea is an idiot, inattentive, sheltered, or all three.
Why? Because the worst engineers help the team by calling in sick. They have negative outcomes all the time, which means everyone else in the team is infinity times as productive.
What the rest of us think is 10x versus an adequate developer, and there are almost none of those. Are there people who can work solo and produce as much as a team of 10? Sure, but that’s because of the communication overhead. Can that person join a team of ten and double their output? Only if they are a unicorn among unicorns. The easiest way to double the output of a team is to double the output of the team members. And that doesn’t make you look more productive than them. If you’re not very careful it makes you look less productive.
There are obviously software devs who are more productive than the average. This is true of every skill. The myth is thinking that (a) companies can somehow identify these people in advance, and (b) it is better to prioritize building a team with these supposed rock stars than it is to build a team of potentially average developers who know how to work together, and then properly manage, support & motivate them. A team of ten properly supported 1.5x programmers will beat out one 10x programmer every time. And in many cases the "I'm a 10x dev" personality type does not play well with others.
I'm a firm believer that any genuinely interested, motivated and at least mildly intelligent dev can be made highly productive by finding the right fit. It's far more important for companies to focus on fit and on ensuring that their own managers actually know how to manage than on trying to tap into a hidden stream of 10x devs.
I guess it boils down to the fact that I think many companies absolve themselves and their mgmt team of blame for poor performance by saying "well we just haven't been able to identify 10x devs yet." They expect to be able to hire a single employee who will save the day for them, rather than hiring and training good mgmt.
"Developer who is fortunate enough to be competent, in a structure with minimal comms overhead, high autonomy and no dead weight"
...and it tends to kickstart some good discussion on the topic as a whole.
Second, I don't think a team of ten 1.5x programmers will beat out a 10x programmer. You either have the depth of understanding and imagination or you don't. Take Linus Torvalds, for instance -- I would say he is a 100x programmer, or perhaps a 10,000x programmer, since he is the author of both Git and Linux -- good luck trying to replicate that contribution with a "well managed team". It is similar in many areas -- 10 guys with Math PhDs do not make one Einstein.
In the context of hiring for a business that is developing a CRUD app, you're usually trying to differentiate between 1x programmers and 0.1x programmers, however -- 10x programmers aren't often looking for work.
Productivity = (Time * Effort)^Talent
People like Buckminster Fuller come to mind. Especially because of this quote of his:
>“We should do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian Darwinian theory he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.”
The irony is most companies doing routine CRUD/simple business apps probably shouldn't hire such people as it's a waste and likely causes bad outcomes and perpetuates the stereotype.