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A comment on Why programmers are not paid in proportion to their productivity. Parent comment

Re:Why programmers are not paid in proportion to their produ... by walkon on Wednesday December 23, 2009 @03:27PM (#1012768)
"There are so many horrible programmers that you can be mediocre and be 10x more productive than the guy next to you. Thus you think you're in the 10x crew. But you really aren't. It's not because you're really that good. It's because the guy next to you is really that bad."

So someone who is 10x more productive then their coworker isn't actually 10x more productive because their coworker is so horrible? Isn't "10x more productive" an explicit measure of productivity relative to the guy(s) next to you?

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Re:Why programmers are not paid in proportion to their produ... by scott_s on Wednesday December 23, 2009 @04:03PM (#1012850)
He meant in the class of 10x better than the average programmer, which would include all developers in the world, not just the few you can see.
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Re:Why programmers are not paid in proportion to their produ... by joe_the_user on Wednesday December 23, 2009 @04:13PM (#1012865)
Why would the developers you couldn't see be 10x better than the developers you can see?

Could there be a dark matter halo of great programmers lurking around the world's mediocre-programmer-filled corporate cubicals?

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Re:Why programmers are not paid in proportion to their produ... by scott_s on Wednesday December 23, 2009 @04:14PM (#1012868)
I meant "the developers you can see" to imply the people around you. That's a small sample size, and not representative of the entire world.
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Re:Why programmers are not paid in proportion to their produ... by joe_the_user on Wednesday December 23, 2009 @04:52PM (#1012958)
A small sample size would just imply greater deviation. There's no reason to assume the programmers outside your sample would be x10 better than those in your sample.
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Re:Why programmers are not paid in proportion to their produ... by scott_s on Wednesday December 23, 2009 @05:09PM (#1012989)
That only works when you can assume your sample is representative of the global population. Since people are not evenly distributed according to their abilities, that assumption will not hold.
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Re:Why programmers are not paid in proportion to their produ... by TeHCrAzY on Wednesday December 23, 2009 @08:11PM (#1013174)
But in a generalisation, you have to generalise.
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Re:Why programmers are not paid in proportion to their produ... by rdouble on Wednesday December 23, 2009 @04:50PM (#1012952)
Yes, this is what I meant. I don't know why you got voted down.
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Re:Why programmers are not paid in proportion to their produ... by joe_the_user on Wednesday December 23, 2009 @04:10PM (#1012860)
Yes, the gp's argument seems to contradict itself.
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