[HN Gopher] The Myth of the Myth of the 10x Programmer
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The Myth of the Myth of the 10x Programmer
Author : payne92
Score : 78 points
Date : 2020-02-17 18:37 UTC (4 hours ago)
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| t0astbread wrote:
| It doesn't matter whether 10x programmers exist. Programming is
| not a sport and as such, competition will only lead to narrow
| thinking, useless optimization and hatred. What we should really
| strive for is making programming a more creative activity where
| people learn from and inspire each other, not a competition.
|
| Oh and also, "finding the 10x engineer" feels like a hotspot to
| inject hidden bias into recruiting.
| closeparen wrote:
| Communication overhead is expensive. All else being equal, it's
| much better to build a small elite team that can operate
| successfully with less structure and process, rather than a
| large average one.
| t0astbread wrote:
| Right. But you can't build a functioning team that works
| together and can rely on each other by fostering a culture of
| competition and hiring only the "predestined" 10x engineers.
|
| If the team culture is to help each other, forgive mistakes
| and learn from each other without measuring who's the best
| the team will automatically build itself without the need to
| hire only "10x engineers".
|
| Or so I suppose. I'm not an HR person or anyone else with
| expertise in this field so you should take what I say with a
| grain of salt. I've just been thinking about this a lot as of
| late.
| Bnshsysjab wrote:
| True, but if you culled the bottom 30-50% of programmers, how
| much productivity have you lost?
| t0astbread wrote:
| Probably a lot because now a lot of programmers up to maybe
| the top 10% or 20% are worried they're not good enough which
| will lead to a lot of stress and in turn, less productivity.
|
| Aside from that, if all of programming is competitive it will
| keep a lot potentially very capable people from entering the
| field because not everyone (regardless of ability) is made
| for competition.
| gandalfgeek wrote:
| If you look at the original paper (going back to 1968) where the
| data for a 10x difference was first found, there are a ton of...
| issues.
|
| I've covered this in detail here:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gho89X72Xas
| chx wrote:
| I'd argue today a team could be 10x. Yes it requires someone who
| knows the concepts and can effectively communicate them but also
| awesome project managers, designers and QA personnel. A great
| team (I am lucky to be part of one) functions like a well oiled
| machine churning out acceptably quality features and fixes the
| problems at a surprising rate.
| e1g wrote:
| I think we instinctively recognize the outsized levels of certain
| pros: a 10x leader that is a different creature from a typical
| manager, or a captivating writer that is 10x better than the
| average novelist, or a 10x actor vs a standard-issue LA newcomer,
| or a 10x teacher who inspires far beyond what curriculum
| mandates. Can we accept 10x lawyers, coaches, artists, or
| musicians based on their impact? We do, and we seek and celebrate
| them. Why fashion designers but not app designers, why essay
| writers but not program writers?
| loopz wrote:
| What have the company done in the past 15 years to build a
| progressive learning culture?
| nybblesio wrote:
| The OP's example is perfect: he didn't go to the leaf-nodes and
| write _each test by hand_. Instead, it was clear that writing a
| tool to do the job would be better. Software is all about
| leverage. This is what defines a 10x programmer.
|
| However, I'm constantly amazed how many programmers fail to see
| the forest for the trees.
|
| To a large extent, not seeing (or seeing and ignoring) this type
| of solution is learned behavior. Many environments are hostile to
| this world view. Writing tools (especially those that generate
| code...eek!) is seen as "over-engineering" and "unnecessary
| complexity". If you're in a factory, on a line, your job isn't to
| climb away from your leaf-node.
|
| Any programmer has the potential to be 10x, they just have to see
| and act upon it. Few do.
| skybrian wrote:
| It seems like you're almost debating yourself here, making
| arguments for opposite sides. If anyone could do it and
| environmental effects make all the difference, why emphasize
| individual initiative?
|
| But maybe the best thing to do would be to find a better
| environment, if you can?
| oarabbus_ wrote:
| There are 10x salespeople, and 10x basketball players, and 10x
| scientists; why should there not be 10x programmers?
| petilon wrote:
| 10x programmers do exist. But here's the thing: its not worth
| being a 10x programmer. Managers don't necessarily want them.
|
| First of all, if you complete a project 10x faster than the
| expected time, managers will assume that they had overestimated
| the project, as opposed to recognizing that you're a 10x
| programmer. I have seen this time after time after time.
|
| Secondly, if a manager does recognize that you're a 10x
| programmer then you will be seen as a risk: what happens if you
| leave the company? If the product was built by a team then that's
| a legit business. If the product was built by just 1 person then
| that's not a legit business as the business can suddenly collapse
| if that 1 person leaves.
|
| Third, you make your co-workers look bad by raising the
| expectations bar. You will not win any popularity contests. You
| may make your manager look bad too, if your performance
| diminishes the value of the manager.
|
| If you're indeed a highly capable programmer here's my advice:
| don't be a 10x programmer by doing 10x the quantity of work or
| completing projects in 1/10th the time. Instead be a 1.1x
| programmer, then expend your remaining energy helping your
| teammates grow, and broadening your influence. (So scale yourself
| horizontally instead of vertically.) This advice is often not
| easy to heed if you're introverted, and if you're extroverted you
| are already a manager instead of a programmer.
| EduardoBautista wrote:
| I recommend going into consulting/contracting. A lot of money
| to be earned if you are really productive.
| gilbetron wrote:
| The concept of the 10x programmer seems to have been drifted from
| its original meaning. It isn't that there's a coder that is 10x
| better than a _good_ coder. It is that a lot of people are really
| bad at their jobs, and a coder that thinks and learns about
| problems can be far better than those people. It comes from
| terrible "corporate drone" software developers in the 80s and
| 90s - the ones that would takes weeks to developer simple
| routines. Bring in someone that loves software dev, and they
| appear magical.
|
| Today, with Google and Stack Overflow, that gap has diminished,
| but there is definitely people still way better than "average"
| developers. However, if you have someone that keeps their skills
| sharp and their problem solving desire sharper, you won't fine
| anyone 10x - maybe 2 or 3x, at best.
| starpilot wrote:
| Yeah, I can understand the "10x programmer" back when fizzbuzz
| was still being asked of CS graduates. Not anymore.
| WrtCdEvrydy wrote:
| To be honest, I didn't know that one... I just did basic
| double division the first time I saw it (into a float and
| compared it against an int casted back to a float). Someone
| in the interview room asked my if I remembered modulo and I
| was like 'oh yea, it gives you the remainder'
| khrbrt wrote:
| That's honestly more impressive for creativity sake!
|
| FizzBuzz is just an example of the general problem of
| "given a set of things, do something to a subset of those
| things" which comes up often in real world settings. If you
| knew enough to set up a loop and apply some conditional
| inside of it, then you passed better than some of the
| programmers I've worked with.
| karatestomp wrote:
| That operator's one I've used more on puzzles than in real
| life, where I've used it few enough times in 15ish years
| that I could count them on one hand. I think it only sticks
| in my mind because, for whatever reason, it was taught
| early and with some emphasis in a Perl book I read when I
| was starting out. If not for that I could well fail to come
| up with a reasonably "correct" solution to FizzBuzz.
| shepardrtc wrote:
| > It comes from terrible "corporate drone" software developers
| in the 80s and 90s - the ones that would takes weeks to
| developer simple routines
|
| They still very much exist. My previous job was at a bank and
| these people filled it.
| WJW wrote:
| Can confirm. Last week a PM was gushing to me it "only" took
| a week to implement a feature that was not much more than an
| extra if statement. This is not in a regulated industry
| either, just run of the mill web stuff.
| headmelted wrote:
| Agreed.
|
| I've never encountered someone that I think is genuinely a 10x
| programmer. I've worked with a few people that thought I was
| one, which I'm most certainly not, and I've explained that to
| them.
|
| I've encountered a lot of what I would call .2x programmers
| though. As you've said, there are a lot of people that are
| really bad at the job. It's not a slight either - there are a
| lot of people doing this job that really don't care for it at
| all.
|
| It's hard to be good at a job you don't enjoy. Especially if
| life forces you to do it 40+ hours per week.
| tekkk wrote:
| I myself have noticed that some people just have natural
| cognitive abilities that far surpass any regular person's
| abilities, and I guess that's generally a prerequisite for
| making any new ground-breaking discoveries or libraries. But
| still, one person can only know/do as much as one person can,
| and while having very great skills in some narrow domain,
| other people (or here programmers) might be better versed in
| other skills than this "10x" person. Thus the 10x depends
| very much on the task.
|
| What I have come to appreciate more over the years is the
| ability to communicate and make understandable code that
| other people can build upon. I think it's our greatest
| strength to lean on the collective ability of the group
| instead of depending on some person's individual skill.
|
| And in the end the "10x" is merely a subjective measure, that
| very much depends upon the people you are comparing to. With
| a team of 10x programmers wouldn't everyone be then only 1x?
| eteos wrote:
| If youve encountered a lot of 0.2x, then the 2x developer is
| the 10x developer you are looking for!
| saagarjha wrote:
| > I've never encountered someone that I think is genuinely a
| 10x programmer.
|
| I have. (Interestingly, some of these people knew this and
| had a surprising lack of modesty about it as well...) Usually
| I think it boils down to being able to have the experience to
| consistently guess right on things, come up with new ideas,
| and not get tangled in the weeds: most of them are smart, but
| not so smart that you're just lost when talking to them.
| m0zg wrote:
| >> not so smart that you're just lost when talking to them
|
| That, BTW, is a sure sign that someone is trying to appear
| smarter than they really are. Having worked at 2 research
| labs over the course of my career I know more than my fair
| share of genius-level people. Without fail, they are humble
| about it, and can explain complex concepts in a way the
| rest of us can understand. This is something that just
| blows my mind pretty consistently actually, and IMO it is a
| sign of true, deep understanding of a complex subject. The
| person didn't just memorize formulas (although many of them
| excel at that as well), they understand why things are the
| way they are, the real meaning behind it all.
|
| It could be that this is selection bias though, and I only
| got to know geniuses who aren't also assholes.
| api wrote:
| > It comes from terrible "corporate drone" software developers
| in the 80s and 90s
|
| These definitely still exist.
| logicallee wrote:
| It's pretty obvious that there are coders who can do the work
| of - _all of the work_ of, and better than - a team of 50
| talented programmers.
|
| For example when Linus wrote git he singlehandedly
| outprogrammed every team of version control vendors. He was a
| 50x programmer. (If not more.)
|
| This is a real literal example without exaggeration.
| ellius wrote:
| It really isn't that surprising either. People want to write
| off the notion that some people are massively better than
| others at solving problems, but it's completely obvious
| that's the case. Of course there are insane outliers like
| Claude Shannon or John von Neumann, but those were real
| people that existed, and it stands to reason there are people
| at smaller multipliers who are still much better than
| average.
| JackFr wrote:
| I think a good portion of the story there was thorough
| knowledge of prior art, the ability to identify what was
| essential and what was incidental and the fact that he built
| on a singular vision.
| CognitiveLens wrote:
| It's worth pointing out that the research found a 10x _spread_
| between the least-productive and most-productive engineers - a
| '10xer' isn't someone who does ten times more than the average,
| so it becomes less mythical if you think about someone who does,
| e.g. 2x more than average in an organization with a few burned
| out engineers doing 20% of the average.
| odyssey7 wrote:
| Ah, so the secret to having a bunch of 5x engineers is to not
| burn them out.
| liamcardenas wrote:
| Why wouldn't there be such thing as a 10x programmer? Is the
| average programmer so good? There are outliers in every industry.
| Professional athletes are a clear example -- they are often many
| orders of magnitude better than the average player of their
| respective sport.
|
| There are probably also a few 100x engineers, maybe someone like
| Elon.
| paublyrne wrote:
| The equivalent comparison would be professional athletes at the
| top of their sport to other professional athletes in that sport
| working or playing in a lower league. Would the the top
| performers be 10x the other ones? Hard to quantify this, but
| I'd say no, more like 2x or at most 3x
| WalterBright wrote:
| I personally know many programmers who are easily 10x average
| programmers. No question about it.
|
| They crank out code that is easy to read, easy to understand,
| works right out of the box, and gives years of trouble-free
| operation.
|
| Sean Parent is one of those programmers. It's pretty obvious when
| he describes how he replaced a nightmarish tangle of code that
| re-invented a simple rotate algorithm.
|
| It's a remarkable talk:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2tWOdzgXHA
| 1e-9 wrote:
| Harder problem => Increased productivity variance
|
| For extremely hard problems, it's not difficult to measure
| greater than 20X differences between highly-talented senior
| developers and the average productivity of those capable of
| meeting requirements.
| BXLE_1-1-BitIs1 wrote:
| I remember one programmer that I characterised with "He writes a
| lot of code". I ended up with one of his not small routines that
| I replaced with a one page assembler routine in MVS NIP rather
| than OPEN.
|
| When reworking printing software to support multi color, I
| researched a commonly used subroutine though several layers of
| calls and replaced it with, yes, a single character constant.
|
| I lost count of the many legacy applications where I tossed out
| great gobs of code produced by "productive" programmers.
| RealityVoid wrote:
| I do not think 10x means "churns out code" but rather "produces
| results". And by this metric, by golly, there are a couple 10x
| out there for sure.
| paulus_magnus2 wrote:
| Can we stop the self hate already? There definitely are 10x
| musicians, 10x painters, sportsmen and 10x programmers. You know
| what never exists in 10x form? Burocrats and middle managers who
| write articles like this one.
|
| I suggest to flag this as fake news and all future articles
| intended to devalue young talented programmers who yet are to
| discover their true market value.
| kylec wrote:
| I'll bet 10x managers do exist, but they quickly become VPs or
| CEOs
| lordofgibbons wrote:
| By that reasoning, for all practical purposes, they don't
| really exist. They were already rare to begin with but then
| they also move up the ranks quickly.
|
| One could argue VPs and CEOs technically have people
| reporting to them, but managing people isn't really their
| job. They are mostly concerned with strategy.
| emmelaich wrote:
| Please read the article again. Or even just the title!
| michaelbuckbee wrote:
| Not trying to be a jerk, but I think you might need to re-read
| the article as the author is clearly a developer themselves and
| thinks that there are definitely 10x developers (just that they
| can't be found with a simple coding test).
| Bnshsysjab wrote:
| I would like to think I'm one of them, I'd flail about in
| attempt to solve some random programmer test, but I'm also
| the guy that sits back and says 'hey how about we rethink
| this i n s a n e architecture?'
| teddyh wrote:
| I think you missed the double negative in the title.
| bloody-crow wrote:
| I think team sports is a good analogy here. There's no people who
| are 10x stronger, or who can run 10x faster than their teammates,
| but there's certainly people who'd score 10x points in certain
| circumstances than anybody else, and that is what 10x programmer
| is about.
| Eridrus wrote:
| One thing I have observed recently is the existence of "10X
| projects".
|
| This might be a symptom of working at a big company, but I have
| been really impressed by the ability of some projects to achieve
| their ends while others get stuck in quagmires due to the fault
| of nobody on the project per se, but rather the definition of the
| project itself.
| remmargorp64 wrote:
| 10X programmers DO exist. They aren't just a myth, and they
| aren't just about knowing when to buy vs build, or when to use a
| particular framework or toolkit, or how to "mentor" other
| developers.
|
| Chris Sawyer wrote 99% of the code for RollerCoaster Tycoon in
| x86 assembly language, with the remaining one percent written in
| C.
|
| RollerCoaster Tycoon was a beautiful game which still stands the
| test of time to this day. The fact that a single person was able
| to build a blockbuster-level game almost entirely by themselves
| _in assembly_ is a truly impressive feat which very few
| programmers would even dream of undertaking.
|
| Being a "real" 10X programmer is like being a savant. It's about
| being FUCKING SMART, and it's about being able to deliver a
| working, polished product in the same time that a normal team of
| ten people would be able to deliver it (or in a tenth of the time
| that a single person might).
| Nition wrote:
| Not to diminish the achievement, but worth noting I think that
| RollerCoaster Tycoon was based on his earlier Transport Tycoon
| engine, so at least he did get to split the work up between two
| projects.
|
| I have a personal theory the that the average 10x programmer is
| say 2.5x smarter than average, but also 4x more focused on
| work, netting a 2.5x4=10x total when you remove all the
| procrastination and general fumbling around of the average
| developer.
| JackFr wrote:
| > worth noting I think that RollerCoaster Tycoon was based on
| his earlier Transport Tycoon engine,
|
| The 10x productivity comes in large part from the code they
| DON'T write.
| thombat wrote:
| That 4x more focused means "it ain't me, coz right now I'm
| commenting on HN" ...
| Nition wrote:
| Exactly!
| karatestomp wrote:
| Environment and control (true ownership) can easily turn 1x
| into 10x, I'd say. Not saying I could churn out Rollercoaster
| Tycoon but I bet I'd look, by every metric both reasonable
| and unreasonable, a hell of a lot more productive working on
| a game solo with 100% control of all decisions and not having
| to fret about having something to report in standup every day
| versus... normal work.
| steveeq1 wrote:
| Or he's using better tools and languages. (ie, smalltalk vs
| javascript)
| emmelaich wrote:
| I'd say there are 1000x programmers. Easy. [0]
|
| If we change the question to are there 10x programmers within a
| team in some "average" company with CVs indicating roughly
| comparable experience, then ...
|
| The answer is still yes, there are 10x programmers. I've
| witnessed it myself many times. Not so much because the highs
| are very high, but the lows are very low.
|
| [0] Fabrice Bellard. John Carmack. Linus Torvalds.
| bluetwo wrote:
| I agree they exist. The article does too, at the end:
|
| ...highly productive developers (10x or otherwise) are problem-
| solving at a much higher level. Their productivity won't be
| apparent from a narrow test, any more than the overall skill of
| a world-class football player would be apparent from (say) how
| fast they could run the 100m dash.
|
| The most productive developers are solving big problems, and
| are bringing judgment and experience to bear on essential
| design, architecture, and "build vs use existing library"
| decisions. They're designing key abstractions that will pay
| dividends through the life of the project...
| mark-r wrote:
| I think you're missing the point of the comment you're
| replying to. Yes there are developers who are more productive
| by working at a meta-level above normal, but there are _also_
| people who are just 10x more efficient at actual coding.
| Those are distinct concepts that may or may not overlap.
| [deleted]
| jimbokun wrote:
| Here is your 10x programmer:
|
| https://norvig.com/sudoku.html
|
| "In this essay I tackle the problem of solving every Sudoku
| puzzle. It turns out to be quite easy (about one page of code for
| the main idea and two pages for embellishments) using two ideas:
| constraint propagation and search."
|
| If you gave this task to an "average" developer, how long would
| it take for them to implement? How many lines of code would it
| be? Would the implementation be correct? How long would their
| code take to execute? % python sudo.py
| All tests pass. Solved 50 of 50 easy puzzles (avg 0.01
| secs (86 Hz), max 0.03 secs). Solved 95 of 95 hard
| puzzles (avg 0.04 secs (24 Hz), max 0.18 secs). Solved 11
| of 11 hardest puzzles (avg 0.01 secs (71 Hz), max 0.02 secs).
| Solved 99 of 99 random puzzles (avg 0.01 secs (85 Hz), max 0.02
| secs).
|
| Does the average developer know what "constraint propagation" and
| "search" mean in the above sense, or remember enough about them
| from their CS class to recognize them as the right tools and how
| to implement them?
|
| Also, can the average developer implement a spell checker from
| scratch on a single transcontinental flight?
|
| https://norvig.com/spell-correct.html
|
| So Norvig is always the paradigmatic example of the 10x
| developer, for me. Having a broad range of CS techniques at your
| disposal and knowing how and when to deploy them, is almost a
| super power.
| mjw1007 wrote:
| I'm sure Norvig is very good, but I think the sudoku webpage is
| presenting a finished program in an idealised way, not
| recording the process he used to write it, false starts and
| all.
|
| (It seems likely to me that there were some false starts,
| because eliminate() returns either `values` or False, when both
| of its callers would be just as happy if it returned True or
| False.)
| [deleted]
| zzzeek wrote:
| Norvig's work in those questions are more like the 100x
| developer category.
| amznthrowaway5 wrote:
| > highly productive developers (10x or otherwise) are problem-
| solving at a much higher level
|
| This is a very important point, but calling these highly
| productive developers "10x" doesn't really make sense. They are
| more like "infinity times" compared to the average when it comes
| to getting a difficult task done, since the average developer
| would just get stuck and never be able to invent good designs and
| solve the difficult problems. Even worse, some programmers are in
| the negative on many tasks, adding additional complexity and
| overhead while making little to no positive contributions,
| especially when you give them a problem beyond their
| capabilities.
| wpasc wrote:
| Joel Spolsky's "Hitting the high notes" always comes to mind
| for me when this debate arises.
| teddyh wrote:
| Link: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/07/25/hitting-the-
| high-n...
| SKILNER wrote:
| Yes, it's this simple. The important point is that some things
| are just beyond the ability of average programmers, let alone,
| bad programmers.
|
| There are some things that only top programmers are able to
| actually finish before the end of the universe.
| ccheever wrote:
| I think the way to think about this is that there are some people
| who figure out ways to do things or invent things that just
| wouldn't be figured out or discovered by other people.
|
| So, it's not 10x or anything-X even, it's just that, if the stuff
| that can be uniquely provided by "10x" people is important to
| you, then you need someone like that. 10 1x developers aren't
| likely to give you that (except to the extent that you have 10
| chances to discover that one of them is actually a 10xer on some
| dimension).
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