[kstenerud]

I'm not really sure if I'm qualified to comment on the selectivity idea, since nothing I've written has ever been scrapped (if you don't count my personal projects, that is). Mind you, I've never shied away from or maneuvered away from a project; I've just said up front that X and Y is how it should be implemented.

What I do know is that I have been the 10x guy up until my latest thing, where finally, thankfully, I'm surrounded by people who are on average better than me.

10x, though it sounds objective, is a very fluid term. What I've noticed is that everyone who plays at this level cares deeply about code quality. It's about art meeting functionality, and all of that being shipped on time. It's about avoiding technical debt, except in rare cases of grudging agreement in the face of cold hard facts.

10x is discipline and drive. It's not that they choose to, it's that they're DRIVEN to.