Comment by array_key_first
1 day ago
I think the truth is that there really isn't 10xers, and that's more or less a propaganda technique to get people to crab bucket each other.
Of course everyone likes to think they're santa's special engineer, so they don't need hurdles like protections and a level playing field. But, simultaneously, the industry has been doing everything in its power to make engineers as fungible as possible. The "wet dream" is to make engineers practically assembly line workers - you can just plop some rando in at any time, and it'll probably be fine. You can see this with the extreme turnover in a lot of the industry.
These concepts are in almost perfection contradiction, but they both have the same goal: to convince you and me that the status quo is desirable for each of us personally.
There are those who can provide 10x output in certain kinds of problems. Either due to experience or however their minds work. If their output is as a tech lead then even a 2x can provide an overall 10x increase through second order impact via their team. There are also those who provide 0.5x and 0.1x output on a wide range of problems.
> If their output is as a tech lead then even a 2x can provide an overall 10x increase through second order impact via their team.
This is something the 10x mythology tends to leave out: there are a vanishingly few people who are significantly above the 90th percentile in terms of individual productivity but if the discussion shifted to team dynamics, that’s where you can actually see really big gains by helping a larger group be more productive.
I think its also that few companies have a way to allow a 10x individual productivity engineer to focus on just the things they are 10x as good at. It's almost never everything. Once you add in meetings, politics, proposals, perf ladder requirements, mentoring, code reviews, etc. the result is a regression to the mean.
10x came from actual measurements a few decades ago, getting people to implement the same project and seeing what the result was. The two parts missing from the modern usage of the term: the measurement was within a given team (not overall), and it was a comparison of best and worst, not best and average.
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There aren't 10x ers, but there are definetly 0.15xers