I've seen one "10x" developer in my career. The way he worked was basically to leave a massive wake of data corruption, technical debt and bugs that other people would spend months fixing. Management will never notice, because everyone just accepts these things as part of doing business, and doesn't ask any questions about where it comes from or whether it was the right tradeoff. The tech debt itself doesn't bother me that much, but it always bothered me that he never took any responsibility for creating or fixing it.
However, the idea that there's a strong correlation between productivity and salary is totally a myth IMO. Getting a strong salary is all about being pretty competent, and being able to pass an interview. Once you're in to a high-paying company, mediocre competence (or slightly more) is all you really need. Me and the guy I mentioned had the same pay and the same job title, he was just having a bit more fun.
I've seen one "10x" developer in my career. The way he
worked was basically to leave a massive wake of data
corruption, technical debt and bugs that other people
would spend months fixing.
Amen. I've known one real "10x" developer in several decades. He was truly something of a savant.
I also worked with another alleged 10x developer. He was quite good, but was also given the bulk of the greenfield work and left a massive trail of technical debt in his wake.
Management will never notice, because everyone just accepts
these things as part of doing business, and doesn't ask any
questions about where it comes from or whether it was the right
tradeoff. The tech debt itself doesn't bother me that much
The tech debt absolutely bothers me. It is so destructive to productivity and morale.
We had mountains of technical debt in an overstuffed monolith app. Our test suite alone took close to an hour to run and was flaky.
Management was openly hostile and derisive about attempts to address this debt. They were not engineers so it was like a laughing matter to them. "You want to have a portion of the team focus on something other than SHIPPING? Are you mad?"
Idiots. Some of the smartest idiots in the world, but idiots.
I've also worked with only one truly "10x" developer and dozens of "10x through technical debt" ones. I've very often had to finalize the famous "last 20%" of their projects which is a fun place to be in. "I thought it was almost done?"
There was one guy who worked extremely hard and extremely thoughtfully who was a master at low-level and high-level languages. Kind of a John Carmack type. But these people are like unicorns who you meet once in a career.
I've very often had to finalize the famous "last 20%"
of their projects which is a fun place to be in.
"I thought it was almost done?"
Yeah, and then management thinks you are a mere 0.1x or 1x or 0.01x or whatever because you're moving so much more slowly than the "10x" person.
In a fair world (or a fair workplace) I wouldn't mind doing that kind of work. Ideally, I'd say "I'm willing to do whatever it takes to ship good code! Hell, I'll mop the floors or go fetch sandwiches if that's what the team needs at that moment!"
But at this point, I really try to avoid it. Unless your manager is attentive and technically savvy enough to recognize the hell you're wading through, it's basically just career suicide. The 10x person gets farther and farther ahead of you. At the end of the month he's got 100 commits and has shipped 5 features and 9 fixes. Meanwhile, you've done some fraction of that.
When I have junior devs tackle a mess like that, I make sure to put extra effort into recognizing the difficult work they are doing in cleaning up somebody else's mess. I make no claims of being a good senior dev or a good manager or anything like that. But I try to do that one thing right at least.
However, the idea that there's a strong correlation between productivity and salary is totally a myth IMO. Getting a strong salary is all about being pretty competent, and being able to pass an interview. Once you're in to a high-paying company, mediocre competence (or slightly more) is all you really need. Me and the guy I mentioned had the same pay and the same job title, he was just having a bit more fun.