E01¶


Research	R0007 — AI Made Everyone Faster
Run	2026-03-19
Claim	C004
Source	SRC01
Evidence	SRC01-E01
Type	Factual

Sackman 1968 and subsequent studies confirm large individual variation.

URL: https://www.construx.com/blog/productivity-variations-among-software-developers-and-teams-the-origin-of-10x/

Extract¶

Sackman, Erikson, and Grant (1968) studied professional programmers with an average of 7 years' experience and found: coding time ratio 20:1, debugging time ratio 25:1, program size ratio 5:1, execution speed ratio 10:1. Even after correcting for methodological flaws, a 10:1 difference remained. The finding has been confirmed by many subsequent studies.

Relevance to Hypotheses¶

Hypothesis	Relationship	Strength
H1	Supports	Strongly supports large individual variation
H2	Supports	Confirms the pattern exists
H3	Contradicts	Large variation is well-established

Context¶

The Sackman study is the foundational work in this area. Despite methodological criticisms, its core finding has been replicated across decades.