A 10X programmer is supposed to be 10x the average, not 10x the people who drain value.
I've watched Notch program, and while he knows of lots of game related algos that I don't, he's not a magical snowflake and it'd take me no time at all to find those algos and implement them. There are huge swathes of the code he writes that I'd be comfortable writing at about the same speed.
From experience solving other complex problems in unrelated domains, it might take me 2 or 3 hours of googling, once, for particular problems. The worst ones a day or two. After I've done it once, it's not hard to either remember or find that code and remind myself.
It certainly wouldn't take me 1000s of hours as you seem to think it would.
I don't believe in 10x programmers. I don't agree with many things stated in this article.
What I believe is that most programmers have a complexity ceiling, where if the code goes past a certain level of complexity they are practically useless on that code base. Often they can just deal with bits of it, but try getting them to do a large scale change and they simply can't. They can't reason coherently about their changes. I think both natural talent and experience raises that ceiling, as does time spent on a particular code base (just for that code base).
And that's where I think the 10x myth comes from.
EDIT: I've even seen projects where the original authors couldn't make much more progress with an operational product, I call it 'coding themself into a corner'. They took the project past the point of the complexity that they could personally handle.
Which is hardly as intimidating. If the 10x meme hadn't mutated into a mythical ten times the average developer, it wouldn't be worthy of generating so much clickbait. We'd also be able to hire sanely without freaking out about accidentally recruiting someone normal.
+1 on the hiring sanely. A big part of the hype about the 10x programmer is that you don't pay 10x the salary: you get 10x the programmer for 2x the salary. But if they're only 2.5x programmers, that disconnect disappears.
Antirez's points about design are very relevant. Hiring a 10x CTO is probably very possible. But a 10x CTO can easily cost you 10x in salary, so again no disconnect.
I've watched Notch program, and while he knows of lots of game related algos that I don't, he's not a magical snowflake and it'd take me no time at all to find those algos and implement them. There are huge swathes of the code he writes that I'd be comfortable writing at about the same speed.
From experience solving other complex problems in unrelated domains, it might take me 2 or 3 hours of googling, once, for particular problems. The worst ones a day or two. After I've done it once, it's not hard to either remember or find that code and remind myself.
It certainly wouldn't take me 1000s of hours as you seem to think it would.
I don't believe in 10x programmers. I don't agree with many things stated in this article.
What I believe is that most programmers have a complexity ceiling, where if the code goes past a certain level of complexity they are practically useless on that code base. Often they can just deal with bits of it, but try getting them to do a large scale change and they simply can't. They can't reason coherently about their changes. I think both natural talent and experience raises that ceiling, as does time spent on a particular code base (just for that code base).
And that's where I think the 10x myth comes from.
EDIT: I've even seen projects where the original authors couldn't make much more progress with an operational product, I call it 'coding themself into a corner'. They took the project past the point of the complexity that they could personally handle.