I'm guessing you disagree with the author's definition of a "10x developer". I don't really think there is a clear accepted definition for it.. so how would you define the term?
"10x developer is absolutely a thing, in the easily observed phenomenon that some developers are 10x more productive than other developers. The "other developers" are earning good wages and doing good work; the 10x developer is usually found making 2x or 3x the norm. That said; I just can't believe that a team can perform 10x by the actions of one person. This claim is so outlandish I may just have to skim the article. It is often the case that having a 10x developer nearby can greatly improve the quality of a product, but that's not the same thing as improving the team."
I don't agree that some developers are "10x more productive" than others. I agree that some developers are more/less productive than others but I agree with the article's premise that teamwork is a much more important metric than individual talent. I understand the spirit of "10x developer" in that some individuals are more productive than others.. but the quantification of 10x seems very unrealistic, and IMO is overshadowed by potential productivity gains by having a well-functioning team. Again just my opinion here so feel free to disagree with me on this.
The relevant paragraph in the article is this:
"Software engineering today is a team sport; like water polo, you can’t build incredible software systems alone. So when I first heard the concept of the 10x engineer, I was confused. How could someone be so talented that it overshadows the power of teamwork? In my experience, individual excellence is necessary, but not sufficient, for greatness. Focusing purely on individual achievement misses the larger picture that teams are required to build great software. So I decided to change the definition of a 10x engineer to this: "
It doesn't give a very clear definition of what a "10x engineer" is. Again I agree with them here that the "10x" number and lack of a clear objective "individual productivity" metric makes the term hard to clearly define. Since most work is not done on an individual basis, but rather in teams.
C'mon, we know who it's referring to. That developer who just powers through things, understands huge parts of the stack in depth, and usually sacrifices more of their time than they should to getting things done.
I don't know if you can become that person. I think maybe you have to be born that way, or drag yourself into that position from a young age.
I just disagree with using a "10x" quantification without a clear way to measure individual productivity when you're working in a team. It's not like we can just point to something like.. hey, Person A has 10x as many line changes as Person B, therefore Person A is 10x as productive. And unless we have two individuals working on features completely alone, we can't say Person A shipped 10x as many widget features as Person B either.
I dunno. I honestly don't have a good answer for how to measure individual productivity on a clear, quantifiable basis, again not trying to play dumb here I'm admittedly not sure on it and was hoping to get some feedback from others about it.
If we're assuming good faith, it's meant to make you question your assumptions and goals and whether or not we all ought to take a moment and smile at one another because a smile is worth 100 lines of code and can actually ship products if you do it hard enough.
That said; I just can't believe that a team can perform 10x by the actions of one person. This claim is so outlandish I may just have to skim the article. It is often the case that having a 10x developer nearby can greatly improve the quality of a product, but that's not the same thing as improving the team.
> 10x developer is absolutely a thing
Agreed, it is. I've seen it.
How are you measuring? LOC? Semi-colons per hour? story points? If you're measuring in "dollars earned", how do you think their managers are measuring? And can they tell the difference between a 10x programmer and an 11x programmer?
Sorry, but the only places I've seen 10X developers is when there are lots of 1/10th developers around to compare them to.
The places I _have_ seen someone be 10X better than the people around them has been more a function of the people around them (their overall ineptitude) vs that individual.
Later on, I got certified as a tournament judge, and worked my way up the ranks, eventually becoming a level 3 (the current highest level; previously, levels 4 and 5 existed but were kind of special roles for level 3 anyway, so they got collapsed back into it a few years ago).
Part of my role was to train and teach other people who wanted to do this. A Magic tournament judge, in the eyes of most players, is just someone you call over when there's a rules question or a dispute in your match. And that is the most visible part of what they do. And level 3 does require expert-level knowledge of the game's rules and tournament policies, and you get tested on that (a long written exam at promotion, and 3-4 refresher/update exams throughout each year).
But being level 3 is about a whole lot more than that; L3s aren't more useful to a tournament because they can answer 10x as many rules questions in the same amount of time (they can't). L3s are useful because they act as multipliers for the other people around them. They've put in the time to learn how to coordinate a team of other officials, keep track of all the logistical things that need to be done to keep a tournament running, delegate as necessary and appropriate, etc.
This is something that I saw over and over at large tournaments; L2s were permitted to lead teams on occasion as a kind of supervised training exercise (under the watchful eye of an L3), and watching them always brought home just how much stuff I'd had to learn to do in order to make that look easy, and to know how to keep a team running smoothly and getting things done throughout the tournament.
But most Magic players don't get that; they still persist in thinking of the higher levels as just "the people who can answer really hard rules questions", when that's a tiny fraction of what's actually going on. Someone who could only answer hard rules questions quickly, without all the other multiplier skills, might be useful as an L2, but never as an L3 (I started out as one of those people, for what it's worth).
And when I needed to explain the level structure in a short way, I'd always say it was about broadening your focus. At level 1, your focus is answering questions and being the go-to person in your local game store. At level 2, your focus broadens to include your entire local community, larger competitive events, and helping to train and give feedback on your colleagues. And at level 3, your focus broadens further: now you're concerned with tournaments of all types (including the professional level), you're at least a regional leader, you're working on helping turn existing L1s into L2s and L2s into L3s, etc.
At a tournament, when things were going well, it sometimes looked like I was doing very little, unless you paid close attention. I'd wander around the floor of a tournament, having conversations with other judges, pausing every so often to pull out my notebook and write something down or cross something off a checklist, and occasionally consult on resolving some situation that had come up. But an air of nonchalance can cover for a lot of things actually going on; those conversations would be me checking in on members of my team, following up on things they'd asked about earlier, making sure they had things to keep them engaged if the tournament was running slow, redistributing people around the tournament floor if there were areas without good coverage, making sure they got their assigned breaks, delegating or re-scheduling things as needed, working down my various checklists.
And by contrast, the times when I looked the busiest were the times when things were badly going wrong.