[_9omd]

This is exactly it. The idea of a 10x engineer isn't one who codes a similar implementation 10x quicker, that's ridicules and clearly taking the idea too literally. There's a clear upper bound on implementation efficiency, and it's probably below 10x. There is, however, no upper bound on efficiencies gained through creative problem solving.

The real magic, as you noted, is in understanding the business and being an expert in creative problem solving. A 10xer might develop a tool that thousands of people in the company use and saves millions of hours of time. Or they might design a system with the absolute minimum of complexity, that is a joy to work on and reduces turnover and increases feature velocity. Or, they might just learn to say NO a lot and cut scope creep and allow the company to deliver what's actually important.

I imagine some people don't believe in 10x engineers, because they work really boring jobs where creative problem solving isn't that important. When the implementation is straightforward there's not going to be that much of a gap between the worst and the best. But even in a boring job there is ample room to be a 10xer, you just have to think outside of the box more, understand the business, and understand what's causing friction in implementation.

[Hippocrates]

I agree, the efficiencies of a 10xer are usually in creative solutions to business problems, and 10x would be on the conservative side of what I’ve personally seen achieved. Unfortunately there are also .1x developers that don’t understand the business, or it’s not part of their role. They crank out tickets of rote changes in a pre-existing system. Any large or architectural work is turned into tech debt because they hamfistedly cram it into some existing system or use whatever tech/pattern they’re used to rather than reasoning about the problem and solution from the ground up. This is an organizational problem as much as a personal one. I’ve seen this a lot with offshore workers because they don’t get to see and interact with as much of the business without a lot of effort and support from the org.

[lmarcos]

I've seen what you described as ".1x developers". It's not a big deal, usually because businesses, that hire .1x engineers, rewrite their entire products every 5 years or so. And when you start fresh from scratch, it doesn't matter if you are a 10x or a .1x: business only cares about pushing something to production as fast as possible. Technical debt will be fixed in the next batch in 5 years... by rewriting.

In more serious/long-term companies, since the interview process is more difficult, you don't usually encounter .1x engineers and what I've described doesn't happen.

All in all, there's room for everyone (.1x and 10x)