[Traster]

I feel like we probably spend too much time playing around with the idea of 10x engineers. It's definitely true there are more effective engineers and less effective engineers, but I really find it funny that there's always a focus on the 10x engineer. Partly because it's impossible ot judge a 10x engineer truly, and partly because it almost always is accompanied by a story about how the 10x engineer only works on one specific type of problem, almost never in a way that adds value to a customer. What you really often have is a 0.95x engineering team - where one engineer has the 10x reputation and the team as a whole is performing 0.95x. Meanwhile the 3x team contains a number of '10x' engineers operating at 4x and making sure everyone else is the team is around the same level as them.

What I hope we can all agree on is that in every day life we're a long way past the point where a single engineer is going to make or break your company by being 10x. It's far more important to be making sure that a team of 10 is working at 3x or a team of 100 is working at 1.2x.

[segmondy]

I think the focus is just pure jealousy just the same way people are jealous of those who are 10x income earners.

There are 10x engineers out there who not only product great work, but solid work that doesn't need support, they test, they document. They might not be a pleasure to work with for most because their thinking level is completely different and they don't subscribe to modern software rituals. They focus on what it takes to get it done.

I can't agree that we are way past the point where a single engineer can't make or break the company being a 10x. Sure for most enterprises, but startups and small companies those are still valuable if they can get one.