[garybake]

This here. I think the author is confusing what a 10x developer is.

I took the 10x dev to mean somebody who may work efficiently but also improves all of the devs around them. Improving yourself by 2x is one thing but improving the team around you by 2x is where you get the 10x.

[dkersten]

> the author is confusing what a 10x developer is.

Its a subjective definition. You have a different one to the author. sneak has a different definition to you.

That's a part of the problem: there's no clear definition and the label "10x developer" means different things to different things.

Some of these definitions definitely are a myth. Some are not. But the conversations about it tend to not be that meaningful, because everyone argues their own definition, which may or may not match up with other people who are also arguing theirs. The best we can do is define our definition and then state our reasoning about it and then others can agree or disagree or say yes but if you define it this way that I do, then its different because whatever.

Right now, everyone has a different definition and the discussion isn't that useful.

[magicalhippo]

My coworker is a beast at churning out working code, but mine is often better abstracted and requires less refactoring to use in the future.

There are features where I spent 5-10x the time he'd do, but my code could then be used to later implement several dozen feature requests in mere minutes rather than hours and days.

Who's better? I'd say we've got different strengths, so depends on what you need to get done.

[ygram]

Your coworker is better, sounds like you spend a lot of time on premature generalisation.

[magicalhippo]

Technically premature yes.

But I do have experience guiding me. It's not like I'm abstracting everything I do. So my efforts tend to pay off.

[sneak]

No, the 10x developer is someone who, alone in a room, can ship in y period of time the same thing it would take 10 median developers y units of time to ship, or one median developer 10y units of time to ship.

Because of the mythical man month, the 10 will actually take >y time to do it, due to coordination overhead. The 10xer will still ship the item in 1y. A big part of the leap from 5x to 10x is being able to dodge communication overhead.

Some are also good at boosting their team. Some only work well alone.