[tjs8rj]

I have no idea why this is so contentious in the engineering discipline like it’s some unique question.

When you were in school, weren’t their students just far more capable than others? When you look at sports, aren’t there just players far more capable than everyone else (any pro player vs any non pro)? When you look at art, aren’t there just artists so much better than others (professional artists vs a hobbyist)? Salespersons? Dog trainers? Snowboarders? Etc

Every discipline has a bell curve of skill, and there are engineers who are just significantly better than others and it’s not even close (like any profession). There are limits, but software engineering isn’t anything special here where the idea of outliers warrants this much controversy.

Yes there are “10x engineers”, obviously, because every domain has skill levels spanning magnitudes. It seems like the only thing preventing recognition of this fact is ego (and to be clear, I don’t think I’m a 10x engineer at all)

[ravi-delia]

Yeah I'm happy with my little toys and I've hacked some cool things together quickly, but I've known people who could really do 10x the work just because it was that easy for them. They knew what the problem was immediately and how to fix it well. Working on their code was (and, lucky me, is) a dream.

[8n4vidtmkvmk]

i think i was a 10x engineer at my last job, but the bar was much lower. now I'm just average. it's all relative