7 ms·

A 10x programmer doesn't cost 10 times as much as a regular programmer. 10x programmers are real and drive real business value. The people who insist 10x progra

A 10x programmer doesn't cost 10 times as much as a regular programmer. 10x programmers are real and drive real business value. The people who insist 10x programmers are a myth simply have not worked with one. Do not conflate brilliant-but-an-asshole or prodigious-output-but-creates-a-mess programmers with 10x programmers.

BeetleB 5y ago
Yet another comment that uses the phrase 10x but does not provide any way to quantify it. No one is disputing geniuses exist. Calling them 10x, however, is problematic.
- jasode 5y ago
  > that uses the phrase 10x but does not provide any way to quantify it Understand your complaint but "10x" is best interpreted as a figure-of-speech and not an exact mathematical equation. It's just a short & snappy sounding label that's easy-to-say and easy-to-type on the keyboard. (My previous comment about that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13753178 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13753178) We use numerical type phrases without quantitative precision all the time: - He doubled-down on his opinion. (We don't nitpick and ask how can an opinion be quantitatively measured as 2x?) - The old editors like vi/emacs is a million times better than IDEs. (We don't nitpick about where the 10^6 quantity improvement comes from.) - Microsoft decimated the competition. (Some might nitpick that exactly 1/10th didn't get eliminated but Websters Dictionary says that so-called "correction" is wrong anyway: https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/the-original-definition-of-decimate https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/the-original-d...) And yesterday, the top comment[1] in "Economics Programming Languages" wrote: - >a new language to be adopted it needs to do something (something reasonably important) 10x better than the competition. Even 2x better is not enough to motivate the disruption of changing languages. Yes, it's hard to measure "10x" in languages beyond synthetic benchmarks. But I think most of us get the idea that "10x" is a just a synonym for "a massive amount" of a fuzzy quality. For some reason, "10x" attracts a lot of extra nitpicking that we don't consistently apply to many other examples ("double-down", "million times", etc). [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28784181 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28784181
  - BeetleB 5y ago
    Most of your examples are commonly used phrases. "10x programmer" is a unique phrase. We don't hear "10x electrical engineer" or "10x politician". Phrases like "decimate", double-down, etc are part of the English language, and is well understood to have multiple meanings. Your other examples (e.g. vi/emacs being a million times better) are examples of random numbers people throw out. Someone will say vi/emacs is a ton better, or an order of magnitude better, or a million times better. Whereas with 10x, it's always 10x. I don't hear people talk about 3x programmers or 20x programmers. The HN comment actually supports my point. You can see how different people are interpreting 10x in the responses. That's the exact same problem we have in this comment thread.
    - jasode 5y ago
      >Most of your examples are commonly used phrases. Yes, and "10x" is itself also becoming a commonly used phrase that's getting less tied to the math number 10. This thread's extensive non-quantitative usage from many people is evidence of that. (I'm guessing that in a few decades, the bikeshedding about "10x" will eventually stop and it will be accepted as a non-numerical description like "a million times better") >We don't hear "10x electrical engineer" or "10x politician". The "10x" is relatively new compared to "double-down" but it's spreading out to other uses besides "10x programmer": - "10x manager" : https://www.google.com/search?q=%2210x+manager%22 https://www.google.com/search?q=%2210x+manager%22 - "10x author" : https://www.amazon.com/10X-Author-Level-Left-Behind/dp/1084119919 https://www.amazon.com/10X-Author-Level-Left-Behind/dp/10841... - "10x <various_nouns>" : https://www.hugo.team/10x https://www.hugo.team/10x - "10x" spreading out to company names, etc : https://www.google.com/search?q=10x https://www.google.com/search?q=10x - "10x programming language" : yesterday's HN thread comment example Why do all the above non-mathematical usages keep happening? Probably because "10x" sounds cool. We're witnessing language evolution as it happens. >Whereas with 10x, it's always 10x. I don't hear people talk about 3x programmers or 20x programmers. Sometimes people talk about 100x and 1000x and infinityX to try and emphasize extra rare skills etc. Again, interpreting 1000x literally as 10^3 isn't the intended meaning. And to build on your point... the fact that nobody says "9x programmer" or "11x programmer" but almost always "10x" is actually evidence that it's not trying to communicate exact mathematics.
- WizzleKake 5y ago
  How is it a problem?
- yibg 5y ago
  The problem is value and productivity in software (or any creative space) is hard to quantify in general. How much better is the best engineer you’ve worked with compared to the worst? 2x? 1.5x? How do you quantify that? But you know one is significantly better than the other I assume. If you want to replace 10x with “much much better”, then ok. But the general idea is the same. Some engineers produce an outsized impact compared to their peers.

BeetleB 5y ago

Yet another comment that uses the phrase 10x but does not provide any way to quantify it. No one is disputing geniuses exist. Calling them 10x, however, is problematic.

jasode 5y ago
> that uses the phrase 10x but does not provide any way to quantify it Understand your complaint but "10x" is best interpreted as a figure-of-speech and not an exact mathematical equation. It's just a short & snappy sounding label that's easy-to-say and easy-to-type on the keyboard. (My previous comment about that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13753178 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13753178) We use numerical type phrases without quantitative precision all the time: - He doubled-down on his opinion. (We don't nitpick and ask how can an opinion be quantitatively measured as 2x?) - The old editors like vi/emacs is a million times better than IDEs. (We don't nitpick about where the 10^6 quantity improvement comes from.) - Microsoft decimated the competition. (Some might nitpick that exactly 1/10th didn't get eliminated but Websters Dictionary says that so-called "correction" is wrong anyway: https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/the-original-definition-of-decimate https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/the-original-d...) And yesterday, the top comment[1] in "Economics Programming Languages" wrote: - >a new language to be adopted it needs to do something (something reasonably important) 10x better than the competition. Even 2x better is not enough to motivate the disruption of changing languages. Yes, it's hard to measure "10x" in languages beyond synthetic benchmarks. But I think most of us get the idea that "10x" is a just a synonym for "a massive amount" of a fuzzy quality. For some reason, "10x" attracts a lot of extra nitpicking that we don't consistently apply to many other examples ("double-down", "million times", etc). [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28784181 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28784181
- BeetleB 5y ago
  Most of your examples are commonly used phrases. "10x programmer" is a unique phrase. We don't hear "10x electrical engineer" or "10x politician". Phrases like "decimate", double-down, etc are part of the English language, and is well understood to have multiple meanings. Your other examples (e.g. vi/emacs being a million times better) are examples of random numbers people throw out. Someone will say vi/emacs is a ton better, or an order of magnitude better, or a million times better. Whereas with 10x, it's always 10x. I don't hear people talk about 3x programmers or 20x programmers. The HN comment actually supports my point. You can see how different people are interpreting 10x in the responses. That's the exact same problem we have in this comment thread.
  - jasode 5y ago
    >Most of your examples are commonly used phrases. Yes, and "10x" is itself also becoming a commonly used phrase that's getting less tied to the math number 10. This thread's extensive non-quantitative usage from many people is evidence of that. (I'm guessing that in a few decades, the bikeshedding about "10x" will eventually stop and it will be accepted as a non-numerical description like "a million times better") >We don't hear "10x electrical engineer" or "10x politician". The "10x" is relatively new compared to "double-down" but it's spreading out to other uses besides "10x programmer": - "10x manager" : https://www.google.com/search?q=%2210x+manager%22 https://www.google.com/search?q=%2210x+manager%22 - "10x author" : https://www.amazon.com/10X-Author-Level-Left-Behind/dp/1084119919 https://www.amazon.com/10X-Author-Level-Left-Behind/dp/10841... - "10x <various_nouns>" : https://www.hugo.team/10x https://www.hugo.team/10x - "10x" spreading out to company names, etc : https://www.google.com/search?q=10x https://www.google.com/search?q=10x - "10x programming language" : yesterday's HN thread comment example Why do all the above non-mathematical usages keep happening? Probably because "10x" sounds cool. We're witnessing language evolution as it happens. >Whereas with 10x, it's always 10x. I don't hear people talk about 3x programmers or 20x programmers. Sometimes people talk about 100x and 1000x and infinityX to try and emphasize extra rare skills etc. Again, interpreting 1000x literally as 10^3 isn't the intended meaning. And to build on your point... the fact that nobody says "9x programmer" or "11x programmer" but almost always "10x" is actually evidence that it's not trying to communicate exact mathematics.
WizzleKake 5y ago
How is it a problem?
yibg 5y ago
The problem is value and productivity in software (or any creative space) is hard to quantify in general. How much better is the best engineer you’ve worked with compared to the worst? 2x? 1.5x? How do you quantify that? But you know one is significantly better than the other I assume. If you want to replace 10x with “much much better”, then ok. But the general idea is the same. Some engineers produce an outsized impact compared to their peers.