It seems that the hot topics nowadays is to break the 10x programmer myth. As a typical follower, I feel the urge to do so.
If all of these smart people have never seen a 10x programmer, that is because they did not work with me. Deal with it.
Seriously,
10 times of what? Faster? I believe that every decent developer can get
done 2 or 3 times faster by sacrificing quality. If your goal is to
live on your technical debt to build a MVP and pray to sell your startup soon enough, so maybe. In the other cases, you do not need that.
10x
quality code or fewer defects? How do you measure quality? Moreover
quality is a complex
system and the development team is a part of it. It
depends on coding skills, test but also business understanding by
product manager, budget, planning,... Measuring quality using the defect
rate is a common but inappropriate idea: how can people imagine to get
an idea about a positive aspect (product quality or developer quality)
by measuring a negative aspect? No defect can mean that what you've
built is not being used
at all. Or worse, that you are actually building
nothing.
10x
profit? Yeah, why not? We have some examples of BigInteger-x programmers
. Look at WhatApp! It's narrow minded and straightforward but can be appropriate in some situations.
In my experience you cannot find a 10x
efficient programmer. However, you can have in your team a programmer
solid enough to save your project. A person that doesn't go much faster
than the others but get things done, stay focused and keep her mind cool
even under pressure. These programmers worth gold and are not so hard to
screen if you follow your intuition (yeah, these things needs gut
feeling).
So 10x programmers myth? Forget it.
