The Best Developers are Not Ten Times as Effective as Average Developers

People debate how much more effective a great developer is than an average developer. In “Becoming Steve Jobs,” Mr. Jobs is quoted as saying “The difference between the average programmer and a great one is at least [25 to 1].”

There are above average developers who can deliver 2 to 5 times as many user stories as an average developer. But software development is not just about volume of output, and measured correctly, the best developers are not 10 times, or 25 times, as effective as average ones.

The best developers are infinitely more effective. As in division by 0.

The Sistine Chapel ceiling took Michelangelo four years to paint. An average artist couldn’t have painted it in forty years, or even a lifetime. An average chess player, even given a day for each move, could not defeat Gary Kasparov playing the whole game in an hour.

This is true for any endeavor where genius is possible, and software development qualifies. It’s not about quantitative measures of output. There are other factors like code efficiency, readability, and reusability.

And sometimes it comes down to fundamental achievability. There are product requirements that no average developer can deliver — not if given ten times the schedule, nor even twenty-five times. An average developer will produce unworkable, unreadable, unextendable code, or code that simply doesn’t work. Divide “can deliver” by “can’t” and you get infinitely more effective. To put it another way:

You can’t replace a genius with multiple average developers any more than you can replace the Beatles with a dozen random garage bands.

A bad product manager can increase the need for genius developers. Unclear specifications, changing requirements, and chaotic leadership can turn an ordinary project into one that only a superhuman developer can puzzle through.

A good product manager can make everyone look smarter. Complex requirements can be broken down and described in the simplest and most straightforward way. Change can be mitigated or negotiated. In short, if they can keep the chaos at bay:

A great product manager can enable good developers to shine like superstars.