Hacker News Reader

Comment by jondubois | Hacker News Reader

The 10x software developer is a myth. There are 10x ReactJS developers, 10x Angular2 developers, 10x MongoDB developers, 10x Tensor flow developers, etc... But there is no such thing as a general-purpose 10x developer.

I guarantee you that a 10x heart surgeon won't do as good a job fixing your teeth as a 1x dentist.

The reason why so called 10x developers don't get paid 10x is because business owners and founders who actually have that kind of money are too smart to believe it.

View on HN

I'd actually characterize the problem the opposite way as you: there aren't 10x ReactJS/Angular2/MongoDB/TensorFlow developers, because when we say "10x", we really mean "They delivered the same revenue with 1/10 the code/time/money" or "They delivered 10x the revenue with the same amount of code/time/money."

That usually means thinking of out-of-the-box solutions that reframe the problem in a way that's dramatically easier to solve and often more useful for the end user. For example, they may realize that your customers don't want a web UI that they have to visit separately at all, they just want to receive a text message when certain events happen, and so they can replace your entire UI team with a single Twilio API call. Or they may realize that all of the complicated algorithms you have a whole backend team slaving over can be replaced by a deep-learning network that's mostly pre-trained over ImageNet, and just needs some fine-tuning for your problem.

Usually this requires deep knowledge across domains, not deep knowledge within a domain.

There isn't that much room for out-of-the box thinking in software development (not enough for a 10x boost).

Developers who wander off the yellow brick road don't usually end up in a nice place. The term "lone wolf" is a derogatory term used to describe the kinds of developers who think too far "out of the box".

The best technical ideas are usually derivatives of much older ideas which require deep niche domain expertise to understand.

People say this, and they make career decisions that box them into a certain career path, and then they assume that because that's the only career path available to them, that's the only career path. Meanwhile, other people make career decisions on the assumption that they will get to do the work they really want, and they usually have to work a lot harder to make it happen and face some nerve-wracking moments, but a good many of them actually do end up getting to do what they want.

Tendency to think out of the box is a major problem when trying to be hired, if you are a software developer. Somehow most companies have strictly shaped role-"holes", so developers should develop and do not ask questions, managers should manage and do not code, and we already have smart guys, thank you.

From my own personal experience, I can't agree with this statement in software or in any other human endeavor. An individual in the 99th percentile of talent may be several times more productive than an individual in the 50th percentile of talent. The same goes for an individual who expresses the behavioral adaptations we describe as persistence, effort, and hard work.

The person who has both rare talent and applies total effort may produce 1 - 1.5 (and perhaps occasionally more) orders of magnitude more value than what is average.

Learning a language, library, or framework isn't prohibitively difficult for an experienced developer.

The problem with developer inexperience is more related to understanding broad concepts and pragmatically applying techniques while managing risk (including debt) and understanding business rules.

Learning a language/framework to the point where you can be productive doesn't take very long. Learning a language/framework to the point there you are maximally productive is a much larger and more costly commitment.

> 10x ReactJS developers, 10x Angular2 developers,

Are there really? I don't see many language/framework experts having 10x impact. Maybe Herb Sutter and Bjarne Stroustrup.

If you understand your tools really well, you will be a 10x because you will know what patterns to use and which ones to avoid.

For example, I've written an open source project related to real-time web systems and so I can build chat systems 10x faster and probably 10x better than a typical senior developer but ask me to program a drone and I will be 1/10th as fast as someone who is an expert in that field and I probably won't be as good.

After you become a senior software engineer and have honed your skills in critical thinking and problem solving, all that is left to differentiate yourself are your specializations.

There are lots of generic senior level developers but very few in any given niche.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com