I understand where you're coming from -- there are some truly good engineers out there.

But I think he's right too. He's essentially arguing about the true meaning of the metric. Of course there are engineers who can spot bugs at 1/100th the time as an arbitrary engineer. Or fixes things 10x faster (being familiar with the code base certainly helps).

But to have the literal productive capacity of 10 people? That's much different, and that's what he means. Are you capable of replacing 10 arbitrary engineers with the rockstar? No? Then that's not a 10x engineer, by his definition.

It's rare that anyone tries to replace 10 ordinary engineers with one 10xer. It's common, however, to try to replace one 10xer with 10 ordinary engineers, and find that they can't cope with the challenges.

I can confirm. I have also worked with a number of programmers who have been 5x as productive as an average programmer and one who was easily 10x, possibly more.

My old manager handed Mr 10x a company chequebook and said "write your own salary in there… just don't leave". He left. He wanted challenging work more than he wanted money.

These people exist in all fields: maths, art, music, literature, sport. It is amazing (and somewhat dispiriting) when you meet one, however working with one is, in my experience, only inspiring.

I've worked with someone like this during my internship at IBM.

He was an intern like me but he was carrying the whole team. Solving problems, implementing features left and right.

Never really did talk to the team, other than meetings, just did his work and locked himself in his cubicle.

During our internship he studied for and took a couple of scjp and c++ certifications just because he was bored not studying for exams.

I miss that guy. Not that sociable but really really fucking efficient as a developer.

> He's empirically wrong because I've worked with 10x developers.

I believe you meant "He's anecdotally wrong because I've worked with 10x developers."

To be empirically wrong, you'd have to contradict it with some empirical rather than anecdotal evidence.

It's a matter of sample size, not of principle.

If you're looking for a replicated controlled study, there's been something close:

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/HighNotes.html

Anecdotal evidence is empirical evidence. It's just not very convincing because it doesn't come with any information about how common experiences like those are, or what confounding factors might be at play.

Now, in this case, confounding factors probably aren't a problem, but if 10x developers are one in a million or one in a billion, an anecdote about how someone, somewhere actually met one once isn't very helpful to the rest of us.

Validity of the observation is a potential confounding factor. There are clearly people who impress their coworkers to the extent that those coworkers believe the person is a 10x-average programmer. That's what this kind of report establishes. But is the judgment of those coworkers correct? Is the person actually 10x more productive in any kind of rigorous, verifiable sense? Generally these reports don't come with enough evidence to establish that.

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?