Challenging the Myth of the 10x Programmer

A pervasive belief in software engineering is that some programmers are much, much better than others (the times-10, or 10x, programmer), and that the skills, abilities, and talents of these programmers exert an outsized influence on that organizations’ success or failure. In this podcast, Bill Nichols, a researcher with the Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Institute, recently examined the veracity and relevance of this widely held notion.