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A comment on 10X Programmer and Other Software Engineering Myths. Parent comment

Re:10X Programmer and Other Software Engineering Myths by dahart on Tuesday March 31, 2015 @10:17AM (#9296311)
Nobody denied it. Laurent went looking for evidence (to reinforce it, as a matter of fact) and found there isn't any strong evidence to back up the number 10, he found out that it's mostly a narrative that has been repeated over the decades. He reiterates that he sees a wide variety of programmer performance, and that lots of people are confusing what he's saying, that there isn't evidence, for saying that all programmers are roughly even in productivity.

How do you measure productivity on your team? How do you arrive at the factor of five?

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Re:10X Programmer and Other Software Engineering Myths by eloff on Tuesday March 31, 2015 @10:42AM (#9296514)
Well the number ten has obvious origins. Thanks to evolution we have ten fingers that we like to use to count with. I don't think many people believe it's based on some rigorous data.

A lot of people comment on HN that there are no 10x engineers, which I find strange. How can you work in this industry and not be convinced of the huge gradient in productivity?

We measure productivity with #bugs, #points of features, etc. It's pretty crude, but better than lines of code. It really doesn't tell the whole story though, because most of what makes a 10x engineer is not solving problems faster, but solving the right problem in the first place.

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