[jbay808]

I've worked with a 10x developer. He wasn't a team lead because he wasn't interested in being a team lead and also probably wouldn't have been nearly as good at it as the person who was.

But man, was he ever transformative. Not only in terms of handling the most technically challenging tasks and solving the black-magic challenges that nobody else wanted to touch, knowing the C standard like the back of his hand, and getting things done quickly to a high standard of quality. He also was a force multiplier, because he would help others debug their problems when they got stuck and get them back on their feet and productive again, give advice for how to best handle various edge cases, and designed and maintained our tooling. He was a mentor to junior members of the team, and the team lead would ask his input and advice for how long things might take, what risks he could see causing delays, etc.

You can't plan around having someone like that but they make a world of difference if you're lucky enough to work alongside one.

[blueboo]

Likewise. To have someone with immaculate technical judgment means you potentially have a custodian that keeps an entire multi-team codebase on track.