What has a 10x software developer ever done for us?

“When will people ever admit that the whole idea of a 10x developer is ridiculous? I mean how can one person ever do the work of 10 people? 10 x skills no, 10x ego maybe.”

I’ve heard a number of commentators say things like this. Are they right?

It all sounds a lot like a Monty Python movie

I was recently scrolling through the movies on offer on one of the many streaming services we subscribe to and came across Monty Python’s Life of Brian. What a film. Probably contains the best takedown of Latin teachers I’ve ever seen. But probably my favorite scenes is where the People’s Front of Judea discusses what the Romans did for them.

If you haven’t seen the film, and if you haven’t go find it immediately, you remember that the rebels hate the idea of the Roman Empire. And in trying to come up with reasons why, they bump on a lot of the positive things the Romans have done for the people of Judea.

If you needed to be reminded, here it is in glorious grainy film.

Watching it over again, I started notices that the tone of the argument resembled a lot of the discussion around 10x software developers. Even now 50 years after the concept was first brought up in academic literature, there still a raging debate about whether they are positive or even exist. There seems to be a strong faction of people who consider a 10x developer to just be an egoist and nuisance. Take for instance Rand Fishkin who says that he would rather hire a regular programmer because they’re just a greater pleasure to work with.

The stories that you hear about 10xers tend to be of wild Cowboys. Excellent shots, but not the sorts of people that you’d want to sit down and have a drink with in the saloon. You might ask them for help but all you’d get would be chewing tobacco in the eye and a broken mirror behind the bar.

Are these guys all 10xers?

That certainly isn’t the kind of person that I would want to work with. It got me thinking, if 10x developers are really so difficult to work with that they negate all the benefits they bring, what’s the point? Needless to say, this thought process became truly Pythonesque.

What have 10x software developers ever done for us?

We did have that one excellent developer Eva who helped us build a new framework for generating test data. That sure did help a lot mean that we didn’t have to manually input data anymore.

So all our 10xers have done for us is help us do testing a bit quicker… And there was that developer John who can do really high level debugging. He’s so amazing that he can find problems most other people couldn’t recognize. I mean really, you might be able to stick a bunch of monkeys in a room with typewriters and eventually they’ll write Shakespeare but you could stick 10 normal developers in a room and they wouldn’t be able to find the bugs in your code that John can.

Shown, not a 10x software developer

So all our 10xers have done is help us do testing and debugging… And there’s a developer Adam who has a super in-depth knowledge of Angular. This means that whenever we build anything for the front end, he’s already dealt with something similar and has a solution without thinking about it. His depth of experience really cuts down on how quickly we can deliver efficient web apps.

With the exception of testing, debugging, and understanding our technological environment what have 10xers ever done for us? There is Laura who does an excellent job of taking a big picture view of the features that we added. There’s a notable case where she figured out that the future we’re about to start working on would probably take up 80% of our dev time but really only contribute about 5% of the outcome. By changing the scope of the project we are essentially able to deliver all of the important features without wasting tons of time on this pretty unimportant edge case.

So to run this metaphor to it’s logical extreme, what have 10x software developers ever for us except for helping us with testing, debugging, getting an incredible Insight of our technical environment, and making the right choices to deliver the product on time? Well, the whole team supports each other’s learning, sharing what they know and finding more information so that they can solve problems using different means every time. Rather than being a team of jerks, they are a group of collaborative professionals who have come together to tackle common objectives.

Are all these positive traits worth it if you have a team full of Jerks?

I agree with Rand and would much rather work with people who help the team. But the thing is that none of our 10x software developers are jerks. They all work together really quite easily. While everybody’s individually excellent, they also work together and I would say that our team probably produces software that a team of mediocre developers could never produce and easily double or triple the output of a middle of the road team. Anecdotally, we hear this regularly from our customers who are surprised at the speed and quality of the work that we do.

So if you think that you have to give up on some of your principles to accept 10x developers on your team, if you think that you have to let a jerk come in and run the show to get the value they provide, I think you’re doing it all wrong.

And definitely, don’t give any of these jerks a hockey stick

Most of all, 10x developers can work together for the benefit of the entire team. They amplify everybody’s results so that the team itself is 10 times greater.

Find a 10x software developer who compliments your team

It requires a different process to find and hire a 10x software developer than a normal developer. To help you out, we have written a guide to identifying and hiring the right 10x software developers. So stop trying to fight it, and find the right people to help your company.