Re:Ask HN: What lessons did you learn from your best or wors...
by sombremesa on Saturday May 15, 2021 @12:11PM
(#27166464)
The problem with being a 10x or a 100x dev is that you never get paid commensurate to your value. You’re almost always better off (psychologically - unless you have mouths to feed :P) starting a business if you have business/marketing chops at all.
That said there are projects for which a developer could be infinity-x compared to other regular developers. For example, a highly complex project which regular developers do not have the capacity/talent to complete, ever... Just imagine some very complex project programming a quantum computer or certain kinds of blockchain or distributed systems projects; some developers will never be capable of delivering such projects. It's beyond their innate ability and capacity for learning.
Project complexity maximizes the utility value of highly productive developers. It would be difficult to identify a 100x developer on a simple project (they might only appear as 2x) but they would stand out as a definite 100x on a complex project.