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5 Simple Steps to Becoming a 10x Developer

Gideon Acromond on December 10, 2022

As a software developer, it is often tempting to strive for the title of a "10x developer." This term, popularized by the tech industry, refers to ...
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Matt Stine

Not only is the 10x developer a myth, it's a toxic myth inspired by toxic Silicon Valley bro-dev culture. While your 5 points of professional development are wonderful goals for a developer to go after, please don't market them under this banner.

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Linus Sjöbro

I was hoping to see this comment!

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bxio

It’s not a myth, it’s real. I’ve seen a guy make to 11x.

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Pascal

I am already at 9.75 x

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Fox Scarlett

True, and the word "simple" is doing some heavy lifting here as well.

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Rense Bakker

This again? Really? Its almost 2023. Lets move on people :)
Its extremely arrogant and narcisistic to think you are 10x better than your peers. Grandiose narcissism is a dangerous disease with only victims: webmd.com/mental-health/narcissism...

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Brian

There is no secret sauce other than time and effort. I don't know about 10x as goal, but becoming senior level would be good.

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Aaron Reese

You have sort of missed the point about a 10x developer. As many have already replied, the XXD is a myth in the sense of turning out 10x code or value. For me the 10x developer has the following traits:
Instills a sense of calm and sensibility and deflects/rejects development requirements that make no sense or cannot be justified on an ROI basis.
They instil good working practices in their peers and direct reports including test coverage, automated ci/cd builds, code reviews and source code management.
They adopt good practices such as SOLID, clean code and pragmatic programming. They use conventions for naming of projects, files and variables/functions so that things are easy to reason about. They use the same programming convention s each time when there are options available (e.g. fetch or axios, async-await or promises) and use industry standards (e.g. req and res for request and response)
They use their soft skills to persuade the powers that be to leave enough time for technical debt, R&D and personal development so that individuals, the team and organization can stay at the cutting edge.

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nosknut

I am 2 years into a masters program after spending a few years working in the software industry. Trust me. Looking at the difference between some and others of my peers, there is absolutely something such as individuals who do 10x as much as others. Be it a matter of IQ, experience or confidence, the difference is extrememy noteworthy.

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Comment marked as low quality/non-constructive by the community. View Code of Conduct
LassazVegaz

A typical reply from a uni person

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Pascal

How do you define a 10x dev?
Can he generate code 10x as fast? Just copy paste around and you quickly reach that target. And 10x the number of bugs...
Or does he think 10x as much, before even to start spitting out code? The loc will then be 10x as low, but bugs is also 10x as low, 10x as much maintainability.
So what exactly does the 10x refers to...?

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Morokhovskyi Roman

Thanks for the material, "Build strong collaboration" it’s the most important point, 100% agree

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Oscar Rodriguez

What if you add training material to each point? I don't think you'll get the 10x boost but for sure you'll get a boost in your day to day performance.

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LassazVegaz

All that matters is how you want it.
Is programming part of your life or is it just a source of income?

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Raihan Nismara

i prefer called in the zone mode

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Cale

What a silly term. I hope no one takes this seriously