Feb. 21st, 2019

izard: (Default)
I just finished coding a simple parser in Clojure. (~250 LOC including tests). It took me about 40 hours. I think an average programmer would have made it in 30 hours, and a 10x programmer, like those who can code on a whiteboard at google interview would have made it in just 3 hours (because they are 10x programmers).

However, if I factor in all the time I spent while working on it, it will be 4 work weeks - 160 hours. And I'll need 200 more hours. That includes gathering requirements, attending meetings, getting build and test systems right, working on other non coding tasks like running code through scanners, writing documentation and fixing bugs unrelated to this code.

If I think of a 10x programmer as a 10x parallel machine of coding, I can apply Amdahl's law. 10x programmer does not make 1h meeting in 6 minutes, so everything but coding is serial.

So while 10x programmer is ~13x more productive than me while coding, overall the difference on the example above is just 11%. So for my job (and many others) hiring a 10x programmer is an overkill.

But if I extend my reasoning one step further, then to widen a productivity gap back to 10x like levels we need either different work environment for 10x coder that minimizes disturbances, and/or give each 10x-er a simple programmer aide who would do all the mundane tasks. However, communicating with the aide will still be "serial" :)

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