The 10x programmer: build versus buy

In the software industry, many people hunt these mythical beasts called 10x programmers – people who, given the same task as their peers, are ten times as productive.

Some people claim they don't exist. Others say that they do exist, but only due to lingering in a job and not challenging themselves. Jeff Dickey suggests that being 10x is a function of the environment, not the programmer.

I don't use the word 10x as a term of approbation, and certainly not in a job ad. Frankly, even if such a person exists, they are not scanning the help wanted ads. You want to get their attention, offer them a discount on a home security system to fend off recruiters.

But 10x engineers are real, and you don't always need the highest budget to afford them, or to chase after whoever looks like the last successful startup founder.

What 10x means

First of all 10x programmers really exist... but only because there are a significant amount of utterly incompetent programmers out there. Remember, the claim is a 10x spread between the best and worst, not 10x the average. We accept this kind of spread in a lot of other domains - the best basketball player is easily 10x better than someone playing a pickup game, not only in skill, but in what value they provide to the owner.

What's unusual is that programmers are often employable even when they are 1/10 as good as the best programmers. This isn't true of basketball. In other words: programming itself is incredibly valuable, and skill or intelligence is just a multiplier.

Furthermore, programming is special because it's about abstraction and automation, and has very few material inputs. So you can easily get 10x the value for 1.5x the knowledge.

Consequently, there may be only a few 10x employable basketball players in the world, but there are lots of 10x programmers. If you can write Fizzbuzz in less than ten minutes, you may be a 10x programmer.

Being 10x is not about gifts

Another bias you have to leave behind is that being a 10xer is a gift of some kind. Very few people can be professional basketball players, because the primary determinant is height, and that really is a genetic lottery. But given the right attitude, history, and environment, lots of people can be 10x engineers.

Humans are cursed with cognitive biases like the fundamental attribution error, so we must be very skeptical about any claims that people who succeeded in a startup are superior mutants or something. Instead we should consider that being thrust into novel situations caused them to blossom.

Being able to do a startup, or devote time to a personal project, is a privilege afforded to few. The startup founder is almost certainly someone who won every lottery you can win: born in a country with functioning institutions and easy access to capital, to a family that had the resources to fund learning and early entrepreneurial ambitions, and to boot is probably a tall white male that the rest of the world gives unconscious fealty to.

Privilege is unearned, but, unfortunately, privilege works. Someone who came from that situation is far more prepared for success, in every way. If you are hiring the less privileged, unfortunately, you taking on someone less prepared.

This might be a disturbing conclusion to some, but flip it around. We advocate that women and minorities should have access to things like university educations and entrepreneurial advice and investment, because (a) this matters (b) they often don't have access to it. If you are arguing the fruits of privilege don't matter, you're also saying it's okay not to make special efforts to extend such privileges to those who wouldn't normally get them.

So it stands to reason that someone who has had easy access to all of those is going to be, out of the gate, on average, more productive. It says nothing about their worth as a person, only that society has more invested in them, and they have more resources to draw on. If there is moral fault here, it lies less with the privileged person, and with the rest of us who tolerate such unequal distribution of resources.

So, back to your hiring problem. I just said privileged people probably are better, or at least, more ready to be productive on day one.

Does this mean you should only hire clones of Mark Zuckerberg?? Perhaps that is a viable conclusion, especially if you came from a similar background. If you graduated Stanford CS '11, I don't have a really great reason for you not to hire all your classmates, at least not one I can defend on a balance sheet. (I find such monocultural environments depressing, though.)

But, let's say you are like the rest of us, and your friends aren't all Californian Ivy-leaguers, and maybe you're not even doing something classically startuppy. Or maybe you are an investor looking for undervalued opportunities. Should you be in the market for Zuckerclones? I would argue no.

If you have a Zuckerclone – who is for some reason even available to you – then you are getting a guy who had all the advantages Zuckerberg had, but didn't do what he did. It might even be a contrary indicator, if they are seeking employment from your organization. And, if you are hiring only Zuckerclones, you're basically saying that you don't know how to recognize talent and as Paul Graham says himself, you're "fighting the last war".

Privilege can be compensated for - more easily than you think

Recall the conclusion from the earlier section: I claim that being "10x" can be due to only a modest difference in actual knowledge and experience, maybe 1.5x. Surely this is obvious, when 19-year-olds are being touted as the next wunderkind based on their three or four years of teaching themselves, part time, apart from schooling and all the distractions in a teen's life.

This means the difference between being bright, and being a superstar, is a very small number of hours.

So if you want a 10x programmer, it may, in some circumstances, be better to build, not buy.

You could look for people who are Zuckerclones, minus some experience. But personally, I would look at people who came from less privileged backgrounds. Play Moneyball and look for the people the rest of the industry overlooks, but with a small amount of investment, and in the right team, could be great.

I've seen it happen. The best example is someone I hired to do junior programming because none of the engineers wanted to be bothered with a particular manager's zeal for UI experiments. Her resume was uninspiring, and from her job history, she seemed to be stuck in a rut. But she came recommended from a friend, and she rocked the interview. She knew HTML and CSS cold, and had some programming chops, but most importantly, an amazing attitude. Later I found out that she was only taking those terrible jobs because of an unfortunate financial situation not of her own making. Four years later, now she leads a high-profile project worth tens of millions of dollars to the organization.

Now, this did not happen because we planned or deserved it. We got lucky. In fact, we fucked up because we gave her a job which was practically designed to frustrate her. The one good thing was that our organization was open to recognizing people who were great, and had a culture where there were less filters for women. But the next time I'm hiring, I'm going to try to make this happen on a regular basis.

So to sum up: if you want a 10x person, in an environment where everybody is looking for the same, and they have more money and connections than you, maybe you should look beyond the Zuckerclones. Perhaps you should be looking for people who can be awesome, but have been otherwise frustrated by circumstance. This will cost you, because you need to be the kind of organization that can recognize talent, nurture it, and (crucially) reward it with both money and responsibility.

Maybe these people already even work for you! If you must emulate Steve Jobs, think about how he shook up the organization upon his return in 1997, rescuing people who were awesome but toiling in obscurity, and giving them opportunities to be great.

Given a small amount of investment and patience, that apparently ordinary person right in front of you may become that unicorn you were looking for.