> First of all most software developers have no idea what a quality software developer is until they see somebody who delivers 10x productivity and even then they still cannot typically extract what makes that one developer so much more productive. This blindness is often present in organizations that don't know how to hire or who value their subjective considerations over objective criteria.
I don't know that I even agree 10x productivity implies they are good. Or perhaps I should say I don't even know how one measures productivity?
I worked at a startup on the Android team. We had to implement the exact same stuff as the iOS team, and the iOS team was always ahead of us in terms of how close they were to the spec because there was this one guy who was insanely fast at implementing features.
However, I found out later that when we were really close to releasing, the iOS team actually struggled to get that last mile in because they took shortcuts which was how they were able to implement things so much faster. Consequently the Android app was actually able to ship first.
I don't think this is an uncommon thing either though.. Sometimes people make decisions which are terrible for long term sustainability but they get praised for their quick turnaround. The problem is that those people get rewarded and might not even be there when the problems eventually come back to haunt the team.
I don't know that I even agree 10x productivity implies they are good. Or perhaps I should say I don't even know how one measures productivity?
I worked at a startup on the Android team. We had to implement the exact same stuff as the iOS team, and the iOS team was always ahead of us in terms of how close they were to the spec because there was this one guy who was insanely fast at implementing features.
However, I found out later that when we were really close to releasing, the iOS team actually struggled to get that last mile in because they took shortcuts which was how they were able to implement things so much faster. Consequently the Android app was actually able to ship first.
I don't think this is an uncommon thing either though.. Sometimes people make decisions which are terrible for long term sustainability but they get praised for their quick turnaround. The problem is that those people get rewarded and might not even be there when the problems eventually come back to haunt the team.