| can I ask a few questions as I am struck by this comment - How much of his contribution would you rate as technical vs understanding the domain, understanding of the systems and seeing through explicit requirements to the underlying need (you might see where I am leading). actually that's several questions right there. I am just fascinated by the idea of 10x: my personal assumption is it is like professional football stars - there are those who are paid 1000x, who probably win 10x but as athletes and players will be only a fraction of x better than the lowliest professional player and into the Sunday leagues. However in these fraction of x cases other things come to play - like coach, team spirit, team quality, tactics etc. and in the software field I expect a similar disjunction to occur - knowing the system under maintenance perfectly, understanding / influencing the business requirements, as much as raw technical ability. for example David Beckham is probably 10x player compared to say a professional in the first division. this does not mean he scores 10x as much or retains possession 10x or any other metric you like. but that teams with him in win 10x because of the leverage of the in tease in ability he does have. and leverage is out of this world in software. so just interested - is your ex-Collegue a david Beckham of c++ ? or is he truly a god? |