Those were quite some claims about 10x engineers, made with zero evidence.
We also need to decide what we mean by a “10x engineer”. Many people here are describing engineers who “appear to be productive, spewing out shitty code that makes things worse”. The infamous industrious incompetent. This is not a useful definition of a 10x engineer. There is a reasonable definition of a 10x engineer: a 10x engineer creates 10x the value of a 1x engineer over the same period of time. This is the only meaningfully useful definition. Anyone who wants to understand 10x as “damaging spew” is choosing an unproductive definition. I assume such people are 1x engineers. To be a 10x engineer is to be the kind of person who believes that some engineers can be 10x, and then goes about find out how to be that themselves. 1x engineers get caught up misidentifying bad engineers as “10x engineers who are shit” so they can continue to be mediocre.
We also need to decide what we mean by a “10x engineer”. Many people here are describing engineers who “appear to be productive, spewing out shitty code that makes things worse”. The infamous industrious incompetent. This is not a useful definition of a 10x engineer. There is a reasonable definition of a 10x engineer: a 10x engineer creates 10x the value of a 1x engineer over the same period of time. This is the only meaningfully useful definition. Anyone who wants to understand 10x as “damaging spew” is choosing an unproductive definition. I assume such people are 1x engineers. To be a 10x engineer is to be the kind of person who believes that some engineers can be 10x, and then goes about find out how to be that themselves. 1x engineers get caught up misidentifying bad engineers as “10x engineers who are shit” so they can continue to be mediocre.