The worst developers I've worked with take 2 weeks for tickets that should be simple. That would mean doing 1 easy ticket every day or two makes you a 10x....

I've always hated this term and the mindset around it. I think organizational practices, intelligent engineering strategy, etc are far more important to the output of a team than hiring one genius dev.

Did it ever occur to you they might not be bad developers, they're just goofing off because there's no consequence for being slow?

Like when my old work actually started measuring ticket closure times, our best developers were only 2x more productive than our worst ones. But suddenly a lot more tickets were getting closed.

I mean,I know that some complicated tasks needed the best developers, as the worst ones literally were incapable of understanding the code, but then again doesn't that say something about the code itself and how poorly it communicates its intent? Perhaps clever code is simply confusing code...

I agree, I think that falls under organizational practices

You nailed it.

Those organizational practices and strategy make the best developers better.

If you hire shitty/unqualified developers who cannot communicate, don't know the tools and aren't functional, even the most amazing developer is kneecapped from a productivity point of view because she must be accountable for everything, forever -- the idiots drag her down.

It's like anything else -- if you work at McDonald's, a bunch of slow unmotivated workers will slow down a fast/hard worker. It's just that the value of the labor + output for cheeseburgers is much lower than software!

The worst programmers in a team sometimes have a negative contribution....

But also, even this data is questionable in the extreme.

It may simply be that "10x" people who do exist do so in ways that are challenging to observe. As an example, not making difficult-to-detect mistakes early in the software lifecycle that cause major problems later (classic real world example: mongodb). Or that their influence on a software org causes overall productivity improvements.

In any case, it's a toxic myth that pits individuals against each other for demonstrations of productivity. I'm of the opinion it's a "self-defeating prophecy" or a good example of the "basilisk" effects in game theory.

The real 10x developers in my experience are the hardest to measure. Because they pull the whole team by always being helpful and improving things where they see potential. But that doesn't necessarily show up in their results, but in the whole teams results.

Which is why metrics driven organizations in my experience with their disincentive to help others, slow everything down.

Do they? Or are they just wasting time refactoring instead of getting stuff done?

It's a matter of perspective.

Sure from a "task" stand point, but take quality, reusability, unique approaches, business sense, etc. and the best devs add easily 10x value if not more. Right?

Most of that comes from exposure to the code base, not innate skill. Experience.