Steve Jobs: Great Developers Are 50x Better Than the Average

Author

Andrew Walker
April 15, 2025

  • Great developers aren’t 2x better—they’re 50x more effective.

  • Hiring top talent slashes both time and cost, even at a higher day rate.

  • Steve Jobs knew it: developers are not a commodity.

This is my favourite Steve Jobs snippet, where he contrasts "the dynamic range" between average and best, across different professions.

His point is that software engineering is quite unique in this respect.

Steve observes that in most walks of life, the maximum difference in performance between average and best is (say) 2:1.

That is, at an extreme, the best in any given field might get double the result of an average person in the same profession. He uses the example of the best taxi driver maybe getting you there 30% faster at best (that's 1.3:1).

In software, his experience is "50:1... maybe 100:1".

That is, the best software engineers will deliver 50 to 100 times more per month than the average ones.

Certainly, the idea of a "10x" developer is something I routinely experience in practice.

Now, I've never had the "pull" of a Steve Jobs, but the gist of my 30+ years hiring developers totally supports this concept.

Where most corporates treat developers as a commodity, I go out of my way to find the gems and pay them much more than "the market," because I know that the job is going to get done for a lower total cost to the customer.

Counter-intuitively, I can quote the same job for less money by hiring the best developers, because I know these developers are going to produce 5x to 10x more useful output each day.

In several cases, I just offered a 50% discount on my client's lowest bid to date—and these typically included off-shore development teams.

Don't listen to me though; Steve Jobs says developers are not a commodity.

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Andrew Walker
Consulting to for-purpose CEOs to deliver more impact with existing teams and systems - by freeing humans up from admin.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-walker-the-impatient-futurist/

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