| I'm not a 10x. Ok, I'll concede that point. I'll be average for this conversation. I know people who can just solve problems. If it takes me all day to solve something, I'll reach out to Ken and he'll say "oh, check this setting. It is probably X". Dennis has seen so many problems, he knows how I've tried to solve them and the solutions before I've finished describing what is going on. If these guys solve something in 48 minutes that take others 8 hours, they are 10Xers. But they are more than being "10x productive"; they solve problems that would otherwise not be solved. They get stuff done that other people would lose patience with before it is ever solved. And the best part: it isn't even HARD for them. When those guys rock, they do it with ease, they do it for FUN. Sometimes I am a 10x programmer. Sometimes I spend 48 minutes solving a problem others work on all day before deciding it isn't possible. My goal isn't to "be a 10x programmer", my goal is to be "10x more often today than I was yesterday". |
Many years ago, one junior programmer asked me "How do you do it?". And I answered - "Trust your intuition". I realized later it was a "dumb" answer - but few years later I have realized the following (this may not be true for all 10xers):
I cannot remember a lot of things. Probably these memory issues are due to an undiagnosed ADD. But to compensate the memory issue, I have from an early age picked up the skill to see patterns, asking the right questions and attempting to understand things fundamentally (as much as needed to connect the dots). It exponentially increases the learning effort - but may be that extra effort gives me the intuition to solve/narrow down certain problems quickly. On top of that, I have tried to solve difficult problems just for fun - nobody had to ask me to do that. At times it is like Alice falling down the rabbit hole. I would become obsessed with solving that problem even if I had pending studies for exams next morning. All that added a plethora of experience/hours. If I find somebody solving a problem quickly when I am stuck (which in itself is a rare, because I tend seek help quite late), I typically ask questions on what they were thinking. May even dig into their mindset (to their discomfort) like a psychologist.
On the other hand, I am miserably just-average when I am not interested in certain work or do not understand its purpose.
If somebody feels like a 10x in their company, I advise them to move out to a team/company where they are back to 1x, and keep doing so until age catches up and slows them down.