I very, very strongly doubt that. That's just not how human performance works. There is a lot of variation for sure, but not by arbitrarily high amounts.
Instead, there is a maximum humanly achievable performance, and the performance of individuals varies between zero and that value.
As a trivial example, the world champion in weightlifting doesn't lift 10x as much as the average person – and they certainly don't lift 10x as much as other professional weightlifters. In most fields, the world's top performers are a few percentage points better than the average professional.
I consider any software engineer who performs just twice as well as the average engineer to be part of the elite. And I consider claims of "10x" performance to be complete and utter bullshit concocted by people who have no idea what they are talking about.
Well, Usain Bolt has infinitely more current world records in the 100M than anybody else. He probably also makes more than 10x more money in sponsorship deals than the second fastest or whoever is the fastest currently active sprinter.
I know plenty of software developers who can solve bugs or design systems that the average developer would never be able to do. Those people are infinitely better at those tasks than the average.
10x performance is easy as long as you do not constrain it to something inane. Impact and the ability to solve problems that others can not are functional and practical examples of that.
Those guys weigh 150+ kg though, since deadlifting is a rather informal competition without weight classes. Unless you weigh the same, comparing yourself to them doesn't make sense.
I am not physically active at all, and the world record for weightlifters in my weight class is around 3 times what I am able to lift with zero training.
> Unless you weigh the same, comparing yourself to them doesn't make sense.
Of course it does. The “10x developer” claim is that some people have 150+ kg equivalent brains when it comes to programming. In the right environment they’re lifting 10x more code. Just like with weightlifting, it might not be healthy or useful to compare your productivity to theirs because it hurts and it doesn’t really matter anyway. But just like with weightlifting, the comparison can still be made.
Most of us work with other people in our “intellectual weight class” - so you might not meet many developers that much smarter than you. But they’re out there. The Jeff Deans of this world aren’t spending their time closing jira tickets for simple web apps.
> The “10x developer” claim is that some people have 150+ kg equivalent brains when it comes to programming.
Software development on a team is more than bashing code; a 10× developer is probably most often a 3× coder who helps makes seven 1× teammates into 2× coders.
I think both types exist. There are certainly 10x managers, who write no code but make their entire team multiple times more effective than they would be otherwise.
I've never understood 10x to be an exact quantitative attribute. Treating it like that is missing the point in my opinion. Extreme outliers can exist in any field.
I very, very strongly doubt that. That's just not how human performance works. There is a lot of variation for sure, but not by arbitrarily high amounts.
Instead, there is a maximum humanly achievable performance, and the performance of individuals varies between zero and that value.
As a trivial example, the world champion in weightlifting doesn't lift 10x as much as the average person – and they certainly don't lift 10x as much as other professional weightlifters. In most fields, the world's top performers are a few percentage points better than the average professional.
I consider any software engineer who performs just twice as well as the average engineer to be part of the elite. And I consider claims of "10x" performance to be complete and utter bullshit concocted by people who have no idea what they are talking about.