His point is that smart and productive people are generally hard working, focused and diligent, which is how they get to be so experienced and productive.
> His point is that smart and productive people are generally hard working, focused and diligent
I don't think that tracks. Smart, productive, hard working people don't work 9-5. They work every hour they can, breaking only when they have pushed themselves to the limit. The limit can be hit at any hour. There is no magical property of the universe that gives people unlimited stamina during the hours of 9-5.
> Nobody would call this person "10x".
I'm not sure they would call anyone that, to be fair. A "10x developer" who also puts in 8 hours alongside the 1x developers isn't a 10x developer, he would be called a sucker.
That's entirely the fundamental flaw of the Nx developer ethos to a tee. No individual will benchmark reliably against any other person of their same trade/craft perfectly over time. The mythical BS times developer is so over simplified to be a meaningless concept. Hire "unicorn" and get amazing results just isn't a guarantee. They just probably have better chance than average to make a higher impact, which is good enough for companies that are willing to pay Nx times average salaries to acquire them.
I know it's meant to be funny, but the number of tech people who spend zero time learning about "what's out there", are usually not the most effective developers. You won't find better solutions to existing or even new problems without an interest in industry. Maybe this particular article isn't "industry valuable fair enough", but having zero interest in refining and enhancing your craft beyond the work in front of you is almost guaranteed to end with worse outcomes.
Another flaw in his thinking: brain cycles and sub-conscious processing.
I'm in the middle of a hard problem right now. I ran out of ideas, and opened HN about half an hour ago. In that time, without "trying", I've had two new ideas - one sent me back to my notes, which revealed that my original thinking was flawed; the second sent me to documentation, which suggested a new route to pursue. I'm digesting the implications of that while I write this.
Beating my head against the problem directly for thirty minutes would have been less productive. (Though if I wasn't WFH I would have, and also been miserable, and learned less about the industry than I have from this thread. So there's that.)
I'm far from a 10x anything, but I don't have the only brain which works this way.
If I'd done that I couldn't have context-switched back to the documentation so easily!
Nah. I get what you're saying, and it's a great idea. Sometimes I do go for a walk. More often I do dishes. Those are both, however, higher-commitment, more time-consuming activities than flipping to a different window. If I remember correctly, my sticking point that day felt like a small one, and so the distraction / break I felt like I needed was correspondingly small.
Not true. I've known some very ADHD developers who are constantly context shifting and are able to fuck around on Hackernews for a while and then suddenly knock out a huge amount of work. The problem is that (speaking from personal experience) everybody with ADHD thinks they can do this and 99% cannot.
