[rurban]

For those 10x HN hero's there is never another guy. Only he can fix this problem, the other guy will need 5 years to replace it.

Or only he can produce this feature, e.g plenty of folks tried to improve python or perl performance to an acceptable state but no one succeeded.

[kamaal]

I've seen people who believe they are 10x gang, sometimes go on a long vacation, and when they return to their horror they realise nobody missed them.

Happens all the time. People are less important than they think. Even without this whole layoff business, people in big corps get themselves competing offers and go like 'give me a raise more than this, or I leave'. In every scenario that I saw people leave nobody missed them after 1 - 2 weeks.

As a general rule everybody can be replaced, and everybody can always find a new job somewhere and most do. This is with or without layoffs and happens in ordinary situations too. People leave all the time, many think they are 10x, and they get replaced. Nobody misses them.

[prirun]

> As a general rule everybody can be replaced

My mom always said this to me. Very good advice over my long career. Don't get too uppity, because even if you are a star, most businesses will hire 3 people to replace you rather than deal with an uppity star.

[rurban]

Not my experience. To the contrary.