My experience is that you can find developers who are 10x as productive as their peers, but rarely at the same company. That is, the average engineer at company A is 10x as productive as the average at company B.
I don’t have data on it—it could be hiring or compensation—but I suspect it’s simply systems of work that spend more time focusing on the right problems, in the right way, without slowing down the work.
I've seen it at the same company. Different people have a vastly different likelihood of coming up with workable or even good solutions and execute them in a timely fashion.
I don’t have data on it—it could be hiring or compensation—but I suspect it’s simply systems of work that spend more time focusing on the right problems, in the right way, without slowing down the work.