Are “superstar programmers” more independently-minded?

I'm going to assume for this conversation we are talking about a software engineer that is able to build products very quickly and with relatively few major problems.

At the end of the day I believe the common threads of these type of people are experience, motivation, and direction. For reference, I started my full time career as a software engineer in 2012 and worked my way from SE to Senior Engineering Manager, I have come in to contact with a lot of software engineers.

There is nothing magical about highly effective software engineers. They are usually * Experienced something like 5 - 8 years * Good at self improvement * Focused in one area and one set of tools * Hard workers * Motivated, driven by something inside themselves to code * They are given clear goals and outcomes

Some of the highly effective engineers I've worked with are highly independent and difficult to work with, some have been kind team players, some have been always on the cutting edge and some have gotten really good with one tool and never wanted to change. People who are good at things are still just people and come in all shapes and sizes and personalities.

N=1, I worked with a guy who was at least 10 times as productive as any other programmer I’ve ever met. He was also incapable of delegating, compromising, or cooperating with others. I’ve got a lot of life experience dealing with difficult personalities, and am sympathetic to an extent, so he and I were able to come to a mutual understanding, but it led to deep rifts and dysfunctions in the team that hurt our ability to deliver on product objectives as a whole. He has moved on, but most of his remaining code is (sometimes unfairly) treated as “dragons” territory.

Some organizations are able to accommodate people like this effectively, but the organization has to be set up for that.

EDIT: The only other engineer that I would consider a “superstar” that I have encountered was nowhere near as prolific as the person above, but had an ability to make any project go smoothly. He was technically excellent, but also had the soft skills to help people converge on good solutions and motivate people to contribute. So, N=2.

The idea of the “rockstar ninja lone wolf 10x-er” type is more mythical than reality.

Good managers know they need to hire good team members, not just people who are good at coding by themselves.

The real 10Xer types are those who can work together with the team, set aside their own personal ideas (if they’re different than what the team has decided), and coordinate to get things shipped.

I think you’ll have to define “superstar programmers” to get meaningful answers. Otherwise people will make assumptions that range from “autistic savant” to “famous personality” which is quite a large space.

For famous personalities, for example, the prestige and PR of the name alone is sometimes enough to prompt a hire.

In my mind a "superstar programmer" solves a problem that millions of people have and takes his company to "the moon"© . As other people say, you would have to define what "superstar programmer" means to you. A popular framework creator? A scientist? A fellow engineer at FAANG, like Guido, or James Gosling? A famous entrepreneur? etc... To answer your question with my own idea of a superstar, a great programmer would be smart enough to work on his own terms, on things he wants to work on, and make money (possibly a ton) while doing it.

> And if so, why would companies want to hire them?

I've often thought the best programmers mostly do it as a hobby, instead of imparting their skills to a company where what they've programmed is discarded within a week and has lost its value quickly.

On the other hand, there are hobbyist coders who impart their skills to a side project / SaaS product that they /fully control/ and the code won't be discarded a week later. The value remains.

I don't know what you mean by superstar--that will mean wildly different things in different contexts/companies. That said if I read that as the mythic 10x ex-Google master I'm not entirely convinced such people exist nor if they do they would be so productive in other circumstances.

Yes. Obviously.