[arcanus]

> I think we should get away with the 'net impact' of 10x engineers because that's too contextual

Disagree. My experience is that 10x engineers ARE inherently contextual. When we are talking about the cream of the crop, this requires evaluating impact.

You need the opportunity to thrive, which can be deeply contextual. Luck is an element of life. Napoleon would have been nothing without the French revolution. Einstein was fortunate (but capitalized!) that no one had put together Minkowski distance with open questions from michelson-morley.

> A 'Brain Surgeon' can only do one surgery at a time

A brain surgeon can publish the results of a cutting edge surgery, which can save many more lives that a single hand wielding a scalpel. I don't think anyone here is arguing that surgeon's are evaluated on scalpel technique any more than we are comparing programmers by SLOC/day.