[marcus_holmes]

I think part of the objection to 10x programmers is around expectations, self-assessment, and attitudes.

There are people out there who have difficulty working with others. Some of those people feel that this difficulty is because they're so FUCKING SMART and the others are morons who are beneath them. They're extremely difficult to work with in a team environment, but come across as completely confident about their own abilities.

These people are toxic to work with. They drag everyone else in the team down (part of the reason they are productive is that everyone else has to spend time and effort dealing with their bullshit).

Management should spot this and deal with it. But in a lot of situations the "10x" has managed to get into a position where they have a lot of information that the rest of the team doesn't have (deliberately, usually) and getting rid of them would be difficult. And some managers buy into the whole myth as well, and having a toxic "10x" on their team that they have to carefully manage is a point of pride, or something.

This archetype, the lone genius developer who is 10x everyone else, is extremely appealing to some people. Regardless of their actual ability, they start believing that they are this. And worse, behaving like this.

So while, yes, there are some programmers out there who are very productive, the majority of self-proclaimed "10x programmers" you're actually likely to meet are just socially unaware assholes with inflated egos.

[leroman]

Being a consultant for a considerable part of my career, whilst sometimes working solo on writing a system from scratch.

In one example, re-writing a system written by 7 team members + architect, taking half the time.. Maybe due to working in an organization without a formal org position.. I had to make sure bad requirements, process, tech decisions etc.. don't get in the way of properly collecting requirements, designing and building this system, seen today as a hugely successful project for this company. I have to say, some people see me as an asshole, no doubt, other's see me as a bulldozer that got the work done and stand behind me and keep in touch to this day.

Our interaction will depend heavily on if you are in my way or not, though I don't consider my self toxic or hoarder of information.

[marcus_holmes]

I'm glad this appears to give you some satisfaction, but I hope I never have to work with you, or around you, or on any project you've worked on.

[patrec]

This cuts both ways, smart and competent people might also not like to work with you or any project you've worked on.

I have no real insight into your personality and ability (but neither do you about GF).

Competent people who want or need to fix some dysfunctional monstrosity committed by a coherent group of less able developers are not necessarily welcome, even if they don't have pathological personality traits. All the more if they are not parachuted in to fix something, but e.g. some new starter not high up in the hierarchy. Consider that few people take kindly to being told (if only by implication) that what they've done is garbage, but obviously the world is full of garbage software.

I've seen this time and time again. Long-term diplomacy can sometimes work (assuming the company and individual have the time to spare), but they'll usually need some higher up backing or fail miserably/leave/get-fired.

[tonyedgecombe]

I've been brought into several moribund projects similar to what @leroman is describing. Usually you are there to push past the bullshit. Often the problems start with someone similar to what you described in your original post.

[username90]

What is wrong with ignoring and working around toxic people who only undermines the project?

[leroman]

Ignoring sounds passive but there is nothing passive about telling people their ideas and cooperation is unproductive (be it people from product, RnD, management, QA etc), you spend much time and energy convincing them their ideas are not concrete, or are going in a bad direction, or are simply bad.. Having the burden of completing the project (successfully!) on me, I have to cut through the BS and provide results, not attend to egos and fragility of everyone involved.. Never the less, I try to be dry and not personal as I can to communicate the situation as simple as possible to the other party.. In my consulting career I learned that being "nice" is not worth it and ends up costing me in mental health..

[perl4ever]

"re-writing a system written by 7 team members + architect, taking half the time"

Sure, but are you saying this is about individual productivity or had you considered it might be the costs of coordination?

[leroman]

I wasn't meaning to say anything about the "why", just the facts.. For starters, the project I was working on was a success, the other failed.. so its not even comparing the same thing.

Just offering my anecdotal story as a potential "asshole" offender per OP

[sub7]

Disagree with this. There are absolutely 10x and even 50x engineers out there. Yes they almost always have egos and people complain about them all the time.

But they also build the right product at the right time for the right user and do the work of an entire product + engineering team - often much faster.

Most large, successful companies today have a handful of these guys among the first 20 employees.

[Traster]

This is part of the problem, we (mostly) all agree there actually are 10x and 50x engineers, but there are some people that are conflating 10x execution is being 10x the dickhead. Look in this thread, there are plenty of examples of 10x developers who aren't total dicks to the people around them and don't negatively effect everyone else.

What we need to do is look at the intersections: There are people who are 10x engineers (Peter Norvig) -great. There are 10x engineers who are dicks to the people around them (Linus Torvalds). There are people who think they're 10x engineers but aren't, which are fine (let's be kind as use me as an example) and there are people who think they're 10x engineers who aren't - but are dickheads because of it.

Even if you are a 10x engineer, you shouldn't be a dick - because it's demonstrable that you don't have to be a dick to be a 10x engineer.

I would say it's pretty obvious that the group of people who think they're a 10x engineer and act like a dick is way bigger than the number of actual 10x engineers. That's what I see in the programming community general - everyone has the story of some guy who thinks he's a rockstar but is actually just making everyone's lives hell.

Now if you don't actually know if someone is a 10x-er you've got a group of possible 10x-ers and its polluted by this large pool of people who really are dicks, and really aren't a 10xer

[marcus_holmes]

This explains what I was trying to say better than I did :)

[Beltiras]

I've been a 10X in the past. I don't exactly know why it faded away. Might be that I really REALLY believed in the mission back then but haven't found the spark for anything since. I'm not sure I exuded the toxicity you associate with 10X but I know I wasn't pleasant. I put myself under way too much pressure to get results.

My boss is a 10X all the time. I guess he believes in the mission he's on renovating the IT infrastructure of our org. He's super nice. The antithesis of what you speak of.

Point is: Personalities are different and not necessarily correlated with the 10X trait (if there is such a thing). It might be a host of different circumstances.

[marcus_holmes]

Totally agree. My productivity has varied over the decades, as has my attitude to the rest of the team. Luckily, I don't think I ever claimed to be "10x" (lucky because I have been at least that arrogant in the past).

[NohatCoder]

I think assholery and competence are orthogonal qualities. But normal competent people don't need to tell everyone how smart they are, so you won't usually notice them as much.

[marcus_holmes]

It's also that people who need to tell you how smart they are, usually aren't ;)