Phil Haack has an interesting post about the difference between the most productive developers and us mere mortals.
His conclusion:
“By writing less code that does more, and by writing maintainable code that has fewer bugs, a good developer takes pressure off of the QA staff, coworkers, and management, increasing productivity for everyone around. This is why numbers such as 28 times productivity are possible and might even seem low when you look at the big picture.”
From: 10 developers for the price of one
He’s absolutely right (imo).
Some developers are much more productive than others.
And, it’s very difficult as a manager to find the right way to recognise this without stepping on toes.
At least that’s true in the short term.
In the long run the cream normally rises to the top.
Another problem is that there’s no effective way to compensate a developer for being 28x (or even 10x) as productive. If a newbie developer earns $45K then a fantastic developer should be earning in the region of $1.25m a year.
So if you’re the most fantastic developer working at Telecom (ok, it’s hypothetical) then only 4 people in the company would be earning more than you. Fortunately for you, Telecom last year relaxed their HR rules so that an employee can now earn more than their manager.
The sad fact is that too many companies have an attitude where only management responsibility leads to better remuneration, regardless of how much value or revenue an employee adds to the company.