[alephu5]

The point is 10x what? Compared to who?

We all know people who code faster than the rest of the team but they always cut corners. Part of the reason that everyone else is slower is because they're trying to work around the under-tested tightly coupled mess left behind by the 10x guy.

Then there's the 10x complexity discussed in the parent comment. Plenty of people will take years to solve a problem, if at all, that someone else would manage in a month. However this may be reversed for a different problem since it depends on experience and predisposition, so it makes no sense to talk about a '10x engineer' in this regard.

I share the conclusion with the OP that it's a vague and ultimately useless distinction.

[cutemonster]

Mess creators that slow the company down isn't what's meant with 10x.

What you're describing sounds more like a -0.5 developer