10x Devs Don't Exist, But 10x Organisations Do

One of the most persistent myths in software development is the notion of the hero developer—the rockstar…They are legends.

And like most legends, they don’t really exist…

[they are] the Bigfoot of software development. Frequently sighted; rarely seen.

If nature teaches us anything, it’s this: your surrounding environment shapes so much of you, and yet somehow we remain so oblivious to it.

Management loves to do meaningless performance evaluations, pit employees against each other, and talk some developers up and others down, but the hard truth is that they’re the ones responsible for most of the variation in performance from worker to worker.