[randallsquared]

The worst engineers destroy value instead of creating it. Less bad than that are engineers who create arbitrarily small amounts of value for the product and team. The 10x engineer concept only really makes sense as "10x typical".

[ipsocannibal]

I've come to call this value destruction process "negative work". Typical negative work activities include injecting that new shiny tool into everything because its new and shiny, refactors that require refactors for a single line change that never happens, writing buggy tests and pushing then writing a follow up task to fix your buggy tests that are blocking the pipeline then not doing that task, only doing 'manual' testing, telling the team a tool doesn't work only to realise the dev didn't know how to use it, endless wiki page re-writes, using stand-up meetings as a bitchfest etc. Fortunately, I've become better at recognizing negative work patterns and removing those dev's from my team. Your team will die from attrition if you don't.