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Comment by palakchokshi | Hacker News Reader

Angie's List does explicitly that, showing you superstar plumbers, electricians, doctors, etc. If I am given the choice to hire a great plumber vs. an average plumber I would always hire a great plumber if I can afford him. Your argument that development processes should be built around average programmers is like saying open heart surgical procedures should be designed around average surgeons.

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I don't know how to read your comment. I, for one, do believe that surgical procedures should be designed for the average surgeon.

You want the procedures to be built around superstars?

If I were building a software company that I wanted to survive and thrive long term, I would definitely try to cater to BOTH the superstar and more average programmers. Both have their place.

I think I might have to specify what I mean by average. I read average as competent. Sure there are software processes that a competent programmer can work with but to say all processes should be designed for just competent programmers,as the commentator suggested, is unreasonable in my opinion. I do see your point though about designing processes around just superstars. That's not viable either.

We humans are greedy species. If given opportunity we would always hire superstar (even janitors or hamburger flippers) especially if they don't cost any extra. If you can find superstar, great! but stop crying "shortage" if you are not in the business of open heart surgery.

EDIT: And yes every average heart surgeon is capable of doing heart surgery otherwise they would not get a degree in the first place. There is no such thing as 10x heart surgeon.

heart surgery is very complex and success depends on a lot of things. How a human body will react to a highly invasive procedure is unknown hence if it reacts in a way that your average surgeon has no idea on how to deal with the patient would die. Have you heard of specialists? Do you know why people go to specialists? Why is there a need of specialists if every average heart surgeon can do heart surgery?

So you see there is something like a 10X heart surgeon, he/she is called a specialist.

There is a difference between a specialist and a 10X person. Specialization indicates a detailed knowledge of specialized subject. It has nothing to do with how creative, intelligent and talented you are in solving problems of your domain. I could be specialized into writing device drivers for Real-time linux systems and yet be average programmer. Specialization has to do with knowledge, 10x indicates fluid intelligence in solving problems.

Then I guess we differed on what 10x meant.

This what generally people think of 10x. The imaginative 10x heart surgeon would do following:(any or all of it)

1. Take 10 times less time performing heart surgery.

2. Could perform successful surgery at 10 times less cost.

3. Invent new ways of doing work of 10 heart surgeons.

4. Survival rate of his/her patients would be 10 times that of other heart surgeons.

5. Could perform heart surgery so complicated that it would generally require 10 heart surgeons during the surgery.

Are you going to find such a heart surgeon ? If so, how many? would entire healthcare system be functional if all hospitals are adamant on just hiring 10x surgeon and at the same time advocating bringing more 1x heart surgeons into the market.

How do you think programmers get from average to great?

Some of it is aptitude, some of it is learning the right things from experience and some of it is attitude.

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