I love that while the 10x programmer is still a controversial concept to some in the tech world, Steve Jobs went straight for the claim that 50-100x programmers are possible.

He’s not talking about someone who can write a sales tax calculator 100x faster than an average programmer, he’s talking about someone who can create 100x the value, and through that lens, he was the most “x” person that this industry has ever had: maybe 1,000,000x.

While I am not a fan of the 10x programmer concept, it's easy to find whole code bases that perform 50x-100x slower than they should. If we for example had an optimal web browser code base, even the cheap 99$ Android phones would always hit 120 fps with minimal battery drain.

10x programmer is real because i am him

Complex skills (where excellence requires being good at many individual skills) are distributed log-normally instead of normally (since the probability of being good at any of the individual skill is multiplied out). This creates a long tail on the right side of the distribution, and a big lump on the left side. The long tail is where 2-100x people live.

I've never seen a 100x programmer, but I've seen plenty of 1/100x ones.

People hate the concept of the 10x engineer because they hate the idea that hard work alone won't get them there. It makes them feel incredibly insecure. Further, when you don't have that level of talent it's hard for you to imagine someone that much better than you. This is further exacerbated by having accomplished a lot in life, causing someone to believe that they are better than they are.

The reality is even starker. There are devs that can and devs that simply can’t.

I’ve definitely worked with some wizard engineers. 10x+ is very real, but you can’t compare yourself to that or expect it from someone Just be grateful when you work with one

yes. I've got a few teammates who can do the work that 100 other coders couldn't even if they were paid a million.

kind of funny that everyone who works in sales knows there are 10X salespeople yet 10X engineers still remain controversial