10x developers are the mythical creatures of our times.
What are they? What do they do to be so special?
What does 10x even mean? A 10x developer ...
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10x developers are a total myth. If you want something done really fast, find someone who's done that thing before and bring them on. If you really look at "10x" developers, this is all that's really going on. Put that same developer on something new and they'll slow down to the same place as someone else with comparable experience. We really need to stop perpetuating this myth.
I started the article with that exact statement. :-)
as I wrote further on, I don't know or care if the devs I met and admired were really statistically
10 times faster. they were definitely faster than me and other devs in my team, they were faster doing stuff they new and they were faster learning new things.
because they were focused, they had a positive attitude, they had a learning method. of course while learning they were slower than someone who already had experience on the topic- but that is not the point. knowledge gets outdated pretty fast in our field, being able to quickly switch/unlearn/ learn new thing is as important as being already fast at something.
We're an Agile Scrum dev team. We do 2-week sprints. Our best senior devs will average around 13 story points in a sprint, and their PRs will get at least a few code review comments (often from me). Because of deadlines and devs being out, I needed to code in this past sprint. I did 48 story points in about 3 days, and flawlessly—not a single PR received a code review comment (and my devs are savage).
My legend is real.
freecodecamp.org/news/we-fired-our... ;)
One of the best articles I've ever read, thanks for quoting it
Horace === Rick 👍🏽
Personally, I feel that a lot of being a "10x developer" comes down to motivation. Happy, motivated (and well-paid!) developers are much more likely to eagerly contribute to projects and get ridiculous amounts of work done.
When I feel respected by a company, I find that I achieve flow state much easier and I don't even want to leave the office at 5. When I don't feel respected, the entire day is a drag.
absolutely. same for me. one important aspect though is that often motivation come from ourselves not really from the company, and even money and acknowledgment can come after some time. I saw many times people complain about the company, the tasks the money and do nothing to change - and instead, take it as an excuse to slack off.
but indeed a company - or some tasks - can definitely demotivate.
Interesting what I'm really interested is do you encounter them in high performing teams while encountering these 10x developers?
Cause it just gives me a perception that they might not be great at working as a team.
probably i was very lucky. but they were very good at working in the team, as a team. as I said I believe that above all, the real multiplying factor is actually be a skilled and fast developer with soft skills / attitude which allow motivation knowledge and personal growth to be boosted in others.
Awesome it's a great to know about it :)
I'm more interested in who than in what, so I was thinking about how to spot those mythical 10x creatures in a team. Here's an easy enough to try idea to gradually find them within a company.
Give a developer 3 or 4 weeks vacation and assess the progress of their team right before they're back. In a couple of months all 10x devs should be located. ;-)
yes. this is absolutely true :-)
I don't consider that someone can be 10x better/faster/more efficient at being a developer but I do agree that better developers generally share most of the traits you're referring to.
The only one I am a little more contentious on is the one about shortcuts. Sure, I wouldn't be anywhere without the cut/copy/paste/undo/redo etc type shortcuts but being an efficient and effective developer is less about how fast you type something. I'm thinking about what I am going to write more than I am spending the time writing it. If I was able to type or do some action even faster with less clicks, the improvement would be negligible in the grand scheme of things. If I could improve my speed in working out what I want to write next, then I'd probably have a larger efficiency improvement.
If just looking at it on an automation aspect where someone can turn a 30 minute task into a 30 second task, that totally is a trait of a good developer.
sure. that part is absolutely minimal. i just wanted to point out the speed at typing, debugging, using shortcuts, navigating through screens is also important and can be the trigger of self improvement, since it´s the easiest, quickest to learn and with more immediate impact) and because at the beginning it was one of the first thing i noticed of these magical devs. i was pair programming and ... bam almost i did not even have the time of seeing what they were doing :-)
I did a bit of research on where the notion of the "10x developer" came from.
They did compare (not many) devs of similar experience levels and figured out that some devs AVERAGED over 10x more productive than others across a variety of metrics. (Some individual metrics were much h higher)
However, measuring productivity and true value is hard and the metrics, sample size, and test methodology are all highly controversial.
I tried to sum up those controversies a while back on dev.to: dev.to/thejoezack/4-reasons-why-th...
very interesting article you wrote. :-) lots of links for further reading.
and I agree with you measuring is hard. often controversial. still, like you, I am interested in my personal growth and don't care much if 10x devs exist or not - or are just 3x the average. I just want to become better and faster - without giving up quality.
Same here, I want to be better at the stuff that's easy to measure AND the stuff that isn't!
What if you are a 1X developer but you do such a good work that you make your other 5 team mate 2X so now you have become a 10X developer only the metrics show you are only 0.5X developer and have half the performance of your team mates :))
ah ah! true :-)
but i never meant that the 10x performance is really measured or measurable. is more the overall impact you have on the team. imho you could be a 10x dev as well if you are working at normal speed on your task but really helping out others in the code design phase , or when they are stuck.
I have no love for many of the labels thrown around our community. This desire to label people as if they where unit tests furthers the imposter syndrome we all feel, it exadurates the issue for juniors and raises abnormal expectations for everyone, how fast can I type, do I fit in here, everyone is much smarter than me, look at that girl she's a 10x developer, how can I best that. I know many outstanding developers but I can ring around them in JavaScript land and they can run rings around me in Java land, but when it comes to problem solving we can be equally stumped.
I never felt ashamed when working with such developers, instead, i was really motivated to learn and improve. exactly thanx to their attitude.
how we might feel when comparing to others, if we put too much pressure on ourselves and if we have imposter syndrome does not depend on the labels around.
( but i agree, those labels, expecially if used by recruiters are quite annoying)
Rockstar wizard 10x mega ultra zord.
I created myself a
take-toalias which does the same thing but in one command. You can achieve this using git aliases. This will require you to use functions as wellNow only if we were paid 10x average rather than 10% more.
love it!
One of the best articles I've written. Well reported!