I'm tired of hearing about 10x engineers. I just want to be a good 1x engineer. Or good at anything in life realy.
"The truest 10x engineer I ever encountered was..."
In the end it doesn't matter, whole team could be laid off at once.
It's not about the hours.
https://www.construx.com/blog/the-origins-of-10x-how-valid-i...
You, on the other hand, are claiming that 10x engineers are 10 times more productive than the worst engineers. Completing a programming challenge in a 10th of the time is not the same as being 10 times more productive, and obviously your usage can't be an explanation, even as one you made up on the spot, as the math doesn't add up.
That study also does not exist in isolation:
https://www.construx.com/blog/the-origins-of-10x-how-valid-i...
Because it was? Do you have a better way to repeatedly test performance? And yes, the study's intent was to look at performance, not productivity. It's even right in the title. Not sure where you dreamed up the latter.
What we do know is that the worst engineers provide negative productivity. If 1x is the worst engineer, then let's for the sake of discussion denote x as -1 in order for the product to be negative. Except that means the 10x engineer provides -10 productivity, actually making them the worst engineer. Therein lies a conflict.
What we also know is that best engineer has positive productivity, so that means the multiplicand must always be positive. Which means that it is the multiplier that must go negative, meaning that a -1x and maybe even a -10x engineer exists.
Throw into the mix the fact that productivity is hard to measure as soon as more than one person works on something and that doesn't even begin to consider the economical aspects of software.
And even when ignoring this point, there's that pesky short-term vs long-term thing.
Also, how do you define the term "productivity"? I was assuming that you mean somethint along the lines of (indirect, if employed) monetary output.
The 10x developer originated from a study that measured performance. The 10x developer being able to do a task in a 10th of the time is quite conceivable and reflects what the study found. I'm sure we've all seen a developer take 10 hours to do a job that would take another developer just 1 hour. Nobody is doing it in negative hours, so the math works.
But performance is not the same as productivity.
Performance. That is what the study that found a 10x performance difference observed. There is no mention of productivity in the study. If anyone has tried to study productivity, they most certainly have not come up with a 10x moniker. It seems productivity was mentioned in this thread only because it also happens to start with the letter 'p' and someone got confused.
Of course, that doesn't actually matter as the original study found a 10x difference in measuring performance, not productivity. There is nothing out there to suggest that some developers are 10x more productive outside of those who mixed up their p words. We're not actually talking about productivity; that was just a mistake. If one were to study productivity, I expect they would find that some engineers are many orders of magnitude more productive than the least productive engineers.
I reject that assertion.
> performance, not productivity
You keep saying this like it's a slam dunk refutation, but performance and productivity are highly related.
Because you don't believe the worst developer contributed anything to GPT? Sure, in reality that's no doubt true, but it was only ever meant to be illustrative.
> but performance and productivity are highly related.
Not in any meaningful way. The study found that the fastest developer can perform a set of defined tasks in a 10th of the time of the slowest developer. That is what the 10x developer refers to. But being fast doesn't mean being productive.
Come to my backyard and we will each dig a hole of equal size. Let's assume that you can dig the hole in a 10th of the time I can – that you are the 10x hole digger. But, no matter how fast you are, neither of us will be productive.
This is especially common when dealing with historical or academic definitions versus common modern usage. "Evolution" particularly annoys me.
You should avoid using the term, rather than using a definition at odds with common usage. Your usage is confusing - and that is why you are getting push-back.
The definition you have given is nonsensical - it can't be consistent over time or between companies because it depends on finding a minimum in a group. And a value that is strongly dependent on the worst developer is useless because it mostly measures how bad the worst developer is - it doesn't say anything about how good the best developer is.
Productivity has no inherent value - like efficiency and perfection, it is necessarily of something else. Its value is entirely derived.
3x bonus multiplies (Redefines Expectations) are extremely uncommon. Level increases certainly help but like, L7 only makes ~3x what L5 does -- not 10x. And there are few L7s and very few L8+.