--- title: You can’t find 10x developers, but you can build 10x... description: The famous '10x developer' idea comes from the 1968 study on online and offline programming performance, Justin Reock argues. The Coding War Games study by... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/you-can-t-find-10x-developers-but-you-can-build-10x-organizations-hhr4fxokm twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: You can’t find 10x developers, but you can build 10x organizations | daily.dev og:description: The famous '10x developer' idea comes from the 1968 study on online and offline programming performance, Justin Reock argues. The Coding War Games study by... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/you-can-t-find-10x-developers-but-you-can-build-10x-organizations-hhr4fxokm og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/HHr4fXOKm.png og:image:alt: You can’t find 10x developers, but you can build 10x organizations og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # You can’t find 10x developers, but you can build 10x organizations **[Software Engineering Research](https://daily.dev/sources/abinoda)** · 7 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary The famous '10x developer' idea comes from the 1968 study on online and offline programming performance, Justin Reock argues. The Coding War Games study by DeMarco and Lister found an 11.1x spread between fastest and slowest performers, but that gap clustered by company, not individual talent. Inside a single company, the spread was only about 21%. Top performers had almost twice as much dedicated workspace, three times as many reported acceptable privacy and five times as many were allowed to silence phones. Reock cites Deming's claim that 90 to 95% of productivity is determined by the system and not the worker, and highlights protected focus time, a smooth inner loop, and psychological safety as patterns seen in high-performing engineering organizations. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### What did the Coding War Games study actually find about the 10x developer myth? The 1984 Coding War Games study by Tom DeMarco and Tim Lister found an 11.1x spread in performance between the fastest and slowest of over 600 developers across almost 100 companies. That gap clustered by employer, not individual talent. Within a single company, the difference between engineers was only about 21%, suggesting environment, not individual skill, drove the variance. _Teams rethinking productivity metrics can track engineering benchmarks and research like this on daily.dev._ ### What workplace conditions separated top-performing developers in the Coding War Games study? Top performers had almost twice as much dedicated working space, were nearly twice as likely to report an acceptably quiet environment, and three times as likely to report acceptable privacy. Five times as many top performers were allowed to silence their phones, and three times as many could divert calls. Low performers were twice as likely to report frequent needless interruptions. _Engineering leaders designing focus-friendly workflows can follow this kind of research on daily.dev._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Your “10x Engineer” Is Probably Making Your Team Worse](https://daily.dev/posts/your-10x-engineer-is-probably-making-your-team-worse-q5mqf2bdm) · Medium · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Code was the smallest part of the job](https://daily.dev/posts/code-was-the-smallest-part-of-the-job-jodmlbnfz) · Tech World With Milan · 2 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#productivity](https://daily.dev/tags/productivity), [#ai-coding](https://daily.dev/tags/ai-coding), [#company-culture](https://daily.dev/tags/company-culture) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/you-can-t-find-10x-developers-but-you-can-build-10x-organizations-hhr4fxokm) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"You can’t find 10x developers, but you can build 10x organizations","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/you-can-t-find-10x-developers-but-you-can-build-10x-organizations-hhr4fxokm","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/you-can-t-find-10x-developers-but-you-can-build-10x-organizations-hhr4fxokm"},"datePublished":"2026-10-28T10:06:12.624Z","dateModified":"2026-10-28T10:07:50.785Z","description":"The famous '10x developer' idea comes from the 1968 study on online and offline programming performance, Justin Reock argues. The Coding War Games study by...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/ccbd004981de97b6e582050716e16843?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/ccbd004981de97b6e582050716e16843?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Software Engineering Research","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Software Engineering Research","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/t_logo,f_auto/v1/logos/70072ba716944ea6b33b3e3dc413140c","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/abinoda"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/you-can-t-find-10x-developers-but-you-can-build-10x-organizations-hhr4fxokm","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":0},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"productivity,ai-coding,company-culture","timeRequired":"PT7M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Software Engineering Research","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/abinoda"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"You can’t find 10x developers, but you can build 10x organizations"}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"FAQPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/you-can-t-find-10x-developers-but-you-can-build-10x-organizations-hhr4fxokm#faq","mainEntity":[{"@type":"Question","name":"What did the Coding War Games study actually find about the 10x developer myth?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"The 1984 Coding War Games study by Tom DeMarco and Tim Lister found an 11.1x spread in performance between the fastest and slowest of over 600 developers across almost 100 companies. That gap clustered by employer, not individual talent. Within a single company, the difference between engineers was only about 21%, suggesting environment, not individual skill, drove the variance. Teams rethinking productivity metrics can track engineering benchmarks and research like this on daily.dev."}},{"@type":"Question","name":"What workplace conditions separated top-performing developers in the Coding War Games study?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"Top performers had almost twice as much dedicated working space, were nearly twice as likely to report an acceptably quiet environment, and three times as likely to report acceptable privacy. Five times as many top performers were allowed to silence their phones, and three times as many could divert calls. Low performers were twice as likely to report frequent needless interruptions. Engineering leaders designing focus-friendly workflows can follow this kind of research on daily.dev."}}]} ```