Bigfoot and the mythical 10x developer have a lot in common: Sightings are rare and not definitive. However, although many people have a fuzzy idea about what a Bigfoot looks like, the profile of the 10x developer—the developer who is 10 times more productive than their peers—is more elusive.
This is because notions of the 10x developer are based, at least in part, on undefined or commonly agreed-upon measures of individual productivity and the assumption that those measures can be deployed to assess the relative productivity of team members. One problem with the concept is that even if a reliable measure of personal productivity exists, it’s unclear how it can be reliably correlated with meaningful business outcomes. Instead, many IT leaders believe that focusing on eliminating the net negative developers would be more impactful.
