At least for me, when I hear "10x" engineer I think of the ones who treat the craft as a craft. There is no "shallow" or "narrow" in them. The possess the important skills in software development: - ability to learn quickly
- understanding how to debug and track down problems
- not afraid to jump in where needed
I've worked with plenty of "frontend" engineers and "backend" engineers. I've worked with people who are "SREs". These people have specialized and are usually GREAT at their craft. But I don't lump them into the 10x engineer.For me the 10x engineer is the one who will jump in on react one day and then rust the next. They'll write ansible scripts and automate SSL renewal and then fix a CSS bug the next day. They'll talk through problems with anyone on the team and help get through the block. Think of people like Miguel de Icaza ( https://github.com/migueldeicaza ) who have such knowledge and skill to build complete popular programming languages (Mono), Cross Platform Mobile Platforms (Xamarin), Spreadsheet Applications (Gnumeric). But have no problem building simple iPhone apps in swift. Think of people like Anthony Sottile (https://github.com/asottile) who works on most of the developer tools us python devs use on a daily basis (tox, pytest, virtualenv, etc). Who maintains and builds ubuntu and debian repos for every new release of Python so we can get it easily (deadsnakes). But spends time to explain simple concepts like using "--rm" with docker run to developers. If you have worked with someone like them, you know you are in the presence of a 10x engineer. There is no doubt in your mind. |