[Arjuna]

”The 10x programmer is a silly myth.”

Incredibly high performers exist, but are rare.

For example, the following quote is from a talk given by Gabe Newell.

(Unfortunately, I do not have the URL to the source video for this quote.)

“At IBM in the 1980s, typical productivity would be 1,000 debugged, shipped lines of code per year. That was the metric that they used for their median employee. Where as, when we were shipping Half Life 1, one employee, Yahn Bernier, was shipping 4,000 lines of code per day.”

[marcus_holmes]

I think it's more that the "10x programmer" myth has caused a lot of pain and bullshit.

There are startup CEO's who won't settle for anything less than a "10x programmer" and waste everyone's time trying to find one.

There are narcissistic coders who think they're "10x" and therefore can act like spoiled children to everyone around them.

If I hear "10x programmer" in anything other than "...is a myth" then it's a sign that whoever is speaking is probably someone I don't want to work with.

[jeremyjh]

If you measure lines of code you will indeed find people who produce a lot of it. Is that a lot of value though?

[hereforphone]

HalfLife 1 wasn't shipped in the 80s though. Maybe HL3 will be shipped in the (20)80s.