Shanti’s Dispatches

Funny, we were just talking about this at the office the other day.

Bruce Eckel’s The Ideal Programmer is making the rounds on del.icio.us/popular.

Bruce is unable to point to the exact source of this folklorish anecdote, but says:

My favorite, because it’s such a wake-up call, is that 5% of the programmers are 20 times more productive than the other 95%.

If you do know the source — of an actual scientific study confirming something along these lines — please drop a note in the comments section!

I do believe that something to this effect is true - but perhaps it’s just the top 1% or 0.5%, whatever.

My point (to my buddies) was that: Ok, presuppose it’s true, which doesn’t seem like that big of a stretch. There are always those people who are way off the charts at both ends of the bell curve.

Enter: Magic Geodesic Dome of Productivity Measurement

Let’s suppose there was a magic geodesic dome you could throw people in and measure their productivity, even all those immeasurables like people skills.

The computer says, “Alert, Alert! Larry von Lutzhowzer, your new senior programmer, is 20x as productive on an individual basis as Billy, Joe, Bob, Nancy and Chuck, who’ve all been given great marks but have roughly the same salary as Larry.”

Do you think Larry would even remotely get a bump in pay commensurate with his measured output levels (20 times, with lower bug incidence rates!)?!?

Of course not. He’d be lucky to be making twice as much, even after they determined beyond all reasonable doubt that he was 20x as productive as some of the other team members.

Please note: there are always those under-appreciated Catalysts of the team, who might not output as many Lines of Code or bug fixes, but provide invaluable glue and motivation. Their loss can spell certain doom to a project that’s already teetering on the edge.

So — What’s your point, smart ass?

Go work for a startup, or start one yourself.

That’s the only way you can leverage your skills beyond a paycheck + linearly increasing annual raise.

Turn that 5, 10 or 20x productivity into better products and services. Go all out and hit those High Notes instead of settling for second best.

ps. I know, I know. This is nothing that hasn’t been said before. Sometimes we all need a little reminder.

You can bookmark this, digg this or check the cosmos