Re:Rules of thumb for a 1x developer
by collyw on Thursday April 30, 2020 @10:47AM
(#23031358)
I have noticed that I was the 10x developer - when I was working on a system that I designed an built. Now I am fixing someone else code and he gets 10 times more done than me. Is that because he is smarter than me and get more done, or because he is worse than me and writes code that is obscure for someone else to understand quickly? Obviously its a subjective question, but volume of features completed isn't the only measure. Technical debt can be fairly subtle.
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Re:Rules of thumb for a 1x developer
by the-pigeon on Thursday April 30, 2020 @11:01AM
(#23031569)
The idea of a "10x" developer isn't suppose to be taken so literally.
My personal definition of it is just a developer that doesn't get hung up on issues. Majority of developers I've worked with can get stuck on the same problem for a week that a 10xer can solve in a couple of hours.
The difference is the 10xer understands the system and tools enough that they don't get lost in the weeds. And the other developers do get lost in the weeds. Which of course means a 10xer in one environment won't be it in another environment if they are dropped into it without adequate time for training.
IMHO you have to measure productivity with debugging time included. If you’re fixing the bugs in someone else’s code, the only way to measure productivity is to measure the both of you as a whole.
For me the real 10x skill is knowing when to write code and when not to. Too many programmers code their way out of a problem, instead of reconsidering the problem in a way that they can repurpose something that already exists.