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Comment by dglassan | Hacker News Reader

You'll never comprehend just how good a 10X developer is until you actually work with one. You'll be able to tell they are 10X when you see how much work they get done in short amounts of time.

I don't think it has anything to do with "getting in the zone." A novice programmer that spends 4-5 hours straight focused on a problem is still a novice programmer no matter how far "in the zone" he gets. 10X can only come with experience. And that has to be experience working with other 10X programmers.

A programmer that has 15 years of freelance experience may be good at his/her job, but I doubt they would be as productive as a programmer with 15 years of experience working at top tier companies like Google, Amazon, Facebook, etc.

I really think the only way to become 10X is to watch and learn from other 10X programmers and that will still take years of learning.

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The best programmers I know (those we refer to 10X) check Hacker News once a week, their email once a day, twitter once every 2 days and have every notification turned off in every application that could send them one. They also turn off chat entirely.

One even works with a single monitor so as to only see his code and get 0 distractions.

That's bullsh*t. The best programmers I know talk a lot and read a lot. Shutting off oneself just kills the creativity...

Not necessarily bullshit, but anecdotal. Just like your own experiences.

They're not mutually exclusive. But constant breaks for Twitter, Hacker News, etc. disrupt your attention.

It comes down to what one reads, when, and with how much focus, too.

I just started trying to "chunk" my time in Google Reader, and I noticed a significant increase in actionable information taken away from the articles despite reading from the same sources as during my "between work duties" peeks.

Depends on the job, I guess. Some jobs you hammer out the spec in a meeting once a week, and then sit down, shut up, and implement the heck out of it. Maybe a few tweeks on a public wiki or bug reports fixed during that time.

I suppose I'm noisy as heck, and attend lots of events and meetups and conferences, but I know whole companies full of people who don't get out, dont't talk or read much, and they just stay at work and make a killing. You don't hear about them because they don't get out.

My point is: no doubt that twitter et al are distracting. But that's not what makes the difference between a good and bad programmer. Really complex engineer tasks require your brain to slowly process the ideas that you have, sleep on them, discuss them with colleagues, maybe read something online about it. But I find that the argument that says 'you suck because you are too distracted' is kind of dangerous. Taken to the extreme and it becomes: 'oh I won't answer my mom because that makes me worse at my job' or 'oh I am not drinking wine tonight because I won't be at my best tomorrow'. I think on the contrary, it is important to take one's job slowly to be better at it.

I'll echo and extend that. It isn't about production. It's about the quality of the programmer and his/her ability to think.

fizzbuzz is a good example. There are people who simply cannot do it. No matter how perfect the environment, there are people who will never do it. You cannot teach it, train it, or otherwise wish it into existence.

10x is a misnomer probably in most cases. It isn't that the "10x" programmer is that much faster. It's that he/she is doing things the others cannot.

if you can't fizzbuzz you are a 0x or worse programmer, or need to find some anxiety meds before your next interview.

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