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Comment by fargle | Hacker News Reader

there are problems that people solve that you could pick 10,000 average engineers and they'd never solve. if you have the right person and the right problems why not?

how many books have you written vs. Donald Knuth? Richard Stevens? etc. those are just famous examples. do you think you have approximately the same skill as yo-yo ma? is he not approximately 100x (or more) what you'd be at his job? i don't think it's a stretch to say he's about 10x of the average professional cellist.

as other have pointed out talent, productivity, whatever measure you pick generally follows a normal-like distribution. if you center that bon "1x", most people are about average. 10x, 20x exists, but it might be quite rare. -1x also exists, as do -10x (e.g. that guy who single-handedly destroyed the project via mismanagement, ego, incompetence).

to not recognize this is just simply naive or you can't appreciate other people's talents.

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There are indeed a few legends, however, they are rare. It would be rare for a developer to have the privilege to work with these people.

I agree there is a normal distribution, however, I disagree about the width of the distribution. The variance is much smaller than you think

For every legend there are many many that don’t accumulate fame enough to be observed. The legends as you say exist, therefore the distribution width is at least as wide as they force it to be. The variance is small, but the distribution is wide.

In my experience at places like AWS and other FAANG my observation is it’s at a rate of about 1:300 engineers. In other top employers it’s closer to 1:500. In startups it’s probably in the 1:800 range. In your average tech company probably around 1:1000, and in hideous soul crushing companies literally zero.

Indeed.

And often even when you look at the legends, there is a large chance they would not succeed in a standard office. For instance Wozniak begged HP to put him on the computer team, they wouldn't do it. Despite the fact that in his off time he was achieving more than the team they had assembled.

Carmack dropped out of college. He would be ignored by HR today. We know what he is capable of - he's a legend. And yet in his Meta keynotes he continually talks about working on a problem one day a week and by the next week the environment that he left it was worse than before he improved it. Quest was getting worse faster than he could fix it.

How many 10x developers are put in 0.1x environments and just look normal?

we don't really know the width of the distribution of course! and it depends on where you are and what you are doing.

"rare" i agree with. that's a far cry from being a myth or not existing. "The 10x programmer doesn't exist", i think is what you said - don't move the goal posts.

they are clearly somewhat rare, how rare is a pointless argument. but they exist and i'm glad you have acquiesced to that fact. i hope you have the privilege of working with one someday.

>The 10x programmer doesn't exist.

>I agree there is a normal distribution

Pick a lane.

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