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Comment by kitsune_ | Hacker News Reader

Except for the 10x myth a fairly good article.

I disagree with that, if you describe it as stated in the article: "Overall, good engineers are so much more effective not because they produce a lot more code, but because the decisions they make save you from work you did not know could be avoided."

I've seen plenty of poor decisions that cause 10x the work, and end up with something 10x less maintainable.

Anyone know how to demonstrate this to management? I’m quite certain that my boss think I’m a crappy developer, because I usually take longer than other to produce the same amount of code. But I’ve reduce the amount of code we need to write with three quarters, but that is harder to demonstrate.

Reducing the amount of code shouldn't be the end goal, but a way of increasing quality.

You should seek to demonstrate instead that you're making software that is more malleable, has less bugs, is easier for new hires to understand, is easy to add new features, etc.

Of course it is not an end goal. But a quarter as much code has (in general, everything else equal) a quarter as much bugs, a quarter of the amount of code to read and understand for new hires a quarter as much code to take into account when adding new features. But none of these things are easy to measure or demonstrate. It is just easier to see that Ma8ee took 1.5x weeks to write 10,000 loc while other developer wrote 40,000 loc in x weeks.

Your diligence will surely be rewarded eventually.

/sarcasm

Edit: fwiw id work with ya though. Caring enough to try is half the battle.

I'm not disagreeing with the idea that there is variability in developer productivity. However, quantifying the most productive engineers by throwing around a specific random factor such as "10x" is rather idiotic.

You have entire blog posts by Steve McConnell of Code Complete fame devoted to defending the 10x claim by citing 20 to 50 year old research that shows 5x to 20x differences across certain dimensions and then him falling back to the 10x thing. Not one single sentence where he is being self aware enough to spell out the most likely reason for "10x" being so prominent: 10 is the base of the decimal system and as such psychologically attractive to use.

> Both Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg have said that the best engineers are at least 10 times more productive than an average engineer.

I know I'm venturing into ad hominem territory with this, but first of all: Steve Jobs wasn't a programmer. Mark Zuckerberg, well does he even qualify as a programmer nowadays? How well can he quantify programmer productivity? His decision to use PHP led Facebook to create HHVM and Hack. Is this the 10x developer way?

Anyways, the question to me is: Is it possible for average software engineers to write good software?

Perhaps "10X engineer" is just an easier thing to say than "5 to 20X engineer as described by this paper." Perfect numerical accuracy is not needed to make the point that there is a lot more variance in the productivity of engineers than there is with most jobs.

If someone suggests you focus on the 20% of customers who make 80% of your revenue, and you run the numbers and find a 75-25 distribution, should you call the person making the suggestion an idiot?

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