> Agreed, I don't know why the industry (or people?) in general have a problem with accepting this abilities gap.
I don’t think it’s that people have a problem admitting that there are significant outliers. It’s that there’s a backlash to the fetishization of “hiring 10x programmers” and most people claiming to be one really aren’t.
I know I’m good at it, but I am not and will probably never get to 10x on just writing code. I’ve worked with people who have a better claim to being a 10x. And having seen that, I have also never encountered any company that claims to hire 10x engineers that actually has a process to consistently hire even 1-2x engineers.
If there are 10x engineers, it's a right place, right time situation. Very good engineers with the right experience, luck, a good idea, and the relentless desire to execute. Miss any of those things, and you can still be a a multiplier, just probably not 10x.
Even so at my companies the difference between between good engineers and bad is massive (a lot of the difference is talent and motivation). Imagine you had a company full of shitty engineers, a motivated good engineer in the right could deliver 10x the value of some shit engineer
There's honestly quite a few developers that produce zero or negative value (e.g. by implementing the wrong things, introducing lots of bugs or significant complexity etc). 10x:ing them is not difficult.
I don’t think it’s that people have a problem admitting that there are significant outliers. It’s that there’s a backlash to the fetishization of “hiring 10x programmers” and most people claiming to be one really aren’t.
I know I’m good at it, but I am not and will probably never get to 10x on just writing code. I’ve worked with people who have a better claim to being a 10x. And having seen that, I have also never encountered any company that claims to hire 10x engineers that actually has a process to consistently hire even 1-2x engineers.