Oh! So we have to see if we are referring to a nominal or ordinal measurement: a nominal one like Mohs, where hardness is relative, or ordinal where it is scaled.
For ordinal, we could have homogenous quantity, like meters, so "10X" is really ten times (or the ten means "an order of magnitude by") more productive. Or it's ordinal in that it's numeric in some other sense.
If ordinal, we would have to establish a baseline measurement of what a unit 1X programmer would be. And we know this would vary wildly based on environment, context, and even age. We (the folks in this thread) may agree--other than by personal experience or the Siemans experiment, etc--that there are many confounding factors to just such a measurement.
I think the lowest common denominator we can agree on then would be that there are programmers who are at at least an order of magnitude more <something> (productive) than what we would normally perceive; therefore, 10X programmers certainly exist.
Yet the context of that interpretation depends on the individual, and even by snapshot (maintenance costs did not increase 100X, great docs, mentoring, attitude, etc).
For ordinal, we could have homogenous quantity, like meters, so "10X" is really ten times (or the ten means "an order of magnitude by") more productive. Or it's ordinal in that it's numeric in some other sense.
If ordinal, we would have to establish a baseline measurement of what a unit 1X programmer would be. And we know this would vary wildly based on environment, context, and even age. We (the folks in this thread) may agree--other than by personal experience or the Siemans experiment, etc--that there are many confounding factors to just such a measurement.
I think the lowest common denominator we can agree on then would be that there are programmers who are at at least an order of magnitude more <something> (productive) than what we would normally perceive; therefore, 10X programmers certainly exist.
Yet the context of that interpretation depends on the individual, and even by snapshot (maintenance costs did not increase 100X, great docs, mentoring, attitude, etc).