For example, in this post you seem to be setting the upper bound around 3x. But actually, it is trivial to be 3x more productive than average: (a) Don't browse the internet while at work; (b) Sit there and spend your time working on the actual problem, not ratholing on programmer fixations that have nothing to do with the end result. Done. Congratulations, you are now 3x, before any consideration is made of experience level or talent or smartness or unique instinct or whatever else.
You can only concentrate so many hours a day. Without that resting your productivity drops.
The most productive/best programmer I knew used to piss around flying virtual helicopters for half the afternoon, would throw together prototypes no-one asked him to because he was bored, and went home at 5:30 every day.
> You can only concentrate so many hours a day. Without that resting your productivity drops.
This is the kind of thing people tell themselves to justify procrastination. If you are unable to concentrate for long, maybe you have damaged your attention span by too much internet browsing, and the cure is just to stop?
Also the age demographic of hn lately is younger and less experienced and perhaps the next wave are still learning about the reality of developers that are many orders of magnitude more effective and productive than their average peers.
Some people are just more prolific than others at certain skills.
They are forces of nature, prolific creators that deliver when they have to, and lift up entire teams to be better when they work with others.
The right kind of compounding experience goes a long way.
"I have a highly unique track record of delivering entire projects that would take longer schedules or larger teams to complete. Clients have called me a force of nature, a prolific creator that delivers when the job must get done and one who lifts up entire teams to be better when they work beside me. I provide the right kind of compounding experience that goes a long way."
Such confidence. The hiring managers are swooning over here.
But that's beside the point. Where's the study that meaningfully quantified that type of performance? Especially at an individual, repeatable level? If we can't answer those questions, I must conclude that the current usage of 10x developer is about as meaningful as "passionate ninja rockstar".
... or the infamous -10x developer.
Count your blessings.
The 0.1x developer, if they're actually competent enough to remain employed for more than a probationary period, probably isn't at 0.1x; you're probably underrating them because you're better than average and are thus overrating what average is. (This is part of the Dunning-Kruger effect).
-10x developers should be fired fairly quickly if they're actually that negative and the business is being managed competently. I've worked with a few; they were fired within months or weeks.
Interesting to think it goes in both directions!
For instance, highly skilled people will often underestimate the difficulty of a task for average skilled people, because they complete it with relative ease. It's effectively an overestimation of what "average" is, because they think of themselves as average when they're really not.
"Relative" is the key word here. Your natural high skill performer may think a task is difficult, but they don't necessarily find the same sources of difficulty as average people.
At a concrete level, I remember watching a lecture from a Jazz instructor by the name of Hal Galper, who said something like "Not liking the music you're playing is a sign that you're getting better, since it means you can now hear the mistakes you've always been making". It's really stuck with me through learning other creative pursuits (dance, in particular).
Dunno if I've seen it in software development, but I also don't have any real objective estimation of how good I am at software development.
In my experience, clever (usually simple) architecture in solving a problem will always beat clever code, and volumes of code.