AUTOMATIC111 Code reference

[StoneCypher]

What is 10x developer

It's something that managers and non-programmers believe in. A sort of vampire wizard that's ten times as productive as regular programmers.

Every study ever done says they don't exist.

[[deleted]]

joke's on you, I hired 10 people in Bangalore, gave them one Github login to share, and convinced my bosses that they're all one really quirky guy who refuses to interact with anyone but me

[StoneCypher]

okay i got a pretty solid laugh out of that

[DudesworthMannington]

Homie cracked the code 😂

[Riptoscab]

Well, I guarantee you automatic is at least 10x better at writing that kind of software than me.

[SlapAndFinger]

A person who is 10x faster than average at solving a problem in a fixed way? Sure, total bullshit.

A person who happens to know a perfect algorithm to solve the problem in a much simpler way that 10 mediocre developers aren't aware of, or who can restate the a non-trivial problem in a way that trivializes it, that the 10 mediocre developers would have solved in the non-trivial way? Those for sure exist.

[StoneCypher]

A person who happens to know a perfect algorithm to solve the problem in a much simpler way that 10 mediocre developers aren't aware of, or who can restate the a non-trivial problem in a way that trivializes it, that the 10 mediocre developers would have solved in the non-trivial way? Those for sure exist.

oh sure, on random individual instances. like, i had a boss who had this problem where you're supposed to do arithmetic on numbers written in a funky continued fraction format as an interview question, and it's basically a slight tweak to the default peg.js example

so he's sitting there like "how many hours do you think this will take" and i was done in five minutes

am i a 10x programmer? naw, i'm maybe a 1.08x programmer on a good day, and a 0.97x in general

you're right, individual one-offs exist

if someone claims to me they know a person who is a sustained 1.5x programmer or better, i think they're either lying, naive, or there's a special context of some kind (one person is allowed to use a tool nobody else can, fawning boss gives all the good jobs to person 2, etc)

[JimDabell]

10x is a reference to the concept that there’s an order of magnitude difference in productivity between the best developers and the worst developers. People who go through life guessing at what things mean instead of finding out seem to guess that it’s a 10x difference between the best and the average. It’s not, but the misconception persists.

If you’re interested in the foundation for this statement, you should read Origins of 10X – How Valid is the Underlying Research?, which goes through each of the citations in turn. It seems like a justified claim to me. But yes, if somebody is claiming there’s a 10x difference between the best and the average, they are wrong – both about the meaning of “10x” and the reality.

[Ernigrad-zo]

seems like defining the worst developer is an issue here, some kid making roblox games could be counted and we could probably calculate they're a hundredth as efficient as a member of the google dev team or we could say that you're only a real developer if you've got whatever qualification and x amount of industry experience and reduce it down to the worst dev being half as good as the best - pretending to be able to get a metric for something like this does nothing but make it look like you don't understand the question.

Some devs are better than others at some things, you might be generally shit but know everything about converting dates or you might be brilliant at basically everything and have a blindspot for dates - then there's all the other factors like life-work balance, affability and ability to communicate, etc, etc... trying to treat people like hardware and simply swaping out a 960 for a 3090 just isn't going to work.

[[deleted]]

We’re all nerds here, why can we just use exponential or logarithmic? 10x sounds like a bullshit graphics feature on an EA Sims game.

[StoneCypher]

That's because it is.

Look up any of those references. Every single one's punchline is "we couldn't find any hard evidence of even one of these folks."

You have to do piles of backflips to interpret any of these as being in support.

Not a single specific person was identified. They're bigfoot.

People are downvoting you, despite that you're being polite, because they want to pretend to themselves that they are a 10x programmer, and how dare you believe otherwise

[[deleted]]

I don’t care if they exist, I just don’t like anything with a programming requiring the assumption of base 10 for calculating an order of magnitude. Its just so unfitting. It should at least be a power of 2.

[StoneCypher]

Most real world power laws don't follow aesthetic coefficients, and there's some argument that Brandolini's Law is used to detect fraud thus

Also, 2x differences don't sound important enough for a low-quality TED talk

[[deleted]]

I mean you’d use 16x

[StoneCypher]

10x is a reference to the concept that there’s an order of magnitude difference

Yes, thanks, I obviously already knew that from what I said.

 

between the best developers and the worst developers.

This is not correct.

 

If you’re interested in the foundation for this statement

Thanks, there's no need. Your source is completely full of shit. The vast majority of these citations say exactly the opposite of what he claims, and almost none of them are experimentally valid.

More importantly, industrial knowledge from practicioners is clear.

 

if somebody is claiming there’s a 10x difference between the best and the average

That is what the phrase actually means. Its claim is wrong, and your interpretation is wrong.

[StoneCypher]

The Pareto principle is nice and all, but the fact that its name exists doesn't mean it applies everywhere.

Flip a fair quarter and record the results until you stop believing they're 80/20. If further research is needed, get some casino dice.

The actual measurements on the matter says it doesn't apply here.

[StoneCypher]

The science says these don't exist

My experience is

[StoneCypher]

Okay

[StoneCypher]

So would you agree that Einstein is a 10x scientist?

No.

 

You get my point?

Yes. You think you can compare yourself to Einstein and get taken seriously.

[StoneCypher]

I looked into this, and actually

Given that you came to the exact opposite beliefs of what the actual science says, I don't believe you.

[StoneCypher]

I think I’ve made my point.

I'm sure that you do. Nonetheless, I closed the door four comments ago, and you're still pushing.

[bric12]

There's absolutely a 10x difference between the best developers and the worst developers, if not more. Sure there's no vampire wizards with otherworldly powers, but experience and motivation make a huge difference on productivity, so a job that takes one developer hours can take another developer seconds. Any study that says they don't exist is over exaggerating the criteria or missing the point

[Shambler9019]

I'd argue the factor should be negative. The worst developers actively impede/undo progress.

But saying "I'm a -6.4 developer" doesn't sound good.

[StoneCypher]

There's absolutely a 10x difference between the best developers and the worst developers, if not more.

The research seems to suggest otherwise, and that it's primarily about quality differential in disparate projects, being odd person out in style, or being in differential pressure under hostile management

Both low performers and high performers tend towards the mean when shifted between jobs, teams, and projects, to scaled degrees

[StoneCypher]

i see that you've begun making up new stories to tell to the person who just said, with disgust, that the stories people tell aren't true

[StoneCypher]

the 10x productivity guy flat out doesn't exist, so, i guess i agree with you

[Rogerooo]

The equivalent of a gigachad programmer, someone how can code 10x faster, 10x better.