10x engineer
A rude, unpleasant person who develops a mythology of being “ten times better” than everyone else on the team.
A rude, unpleasant person who develops a mythology of being “ten times better” than everyone else on the team. Yet sadly, this is also the person startups most want to hire.
The 10x engineer is the reason why working in startups sucks. But they may be an endangered species.
"A “10x engineer” is, afterall, an incredible misnomer. A 10x engineer is not necessarily 10 times more productive — they are just “next level” better engineers who in some contexts are 1.5x and sometimes 100x better, depending on the difficulty of the task and leverage of the outcome. But post software foundation, when software looks more like Legos and less like artisan craftsmanship, the relative output multiple of the “10x” engineer working on top of the foundation moves closer to one." -- Sam Gerstenzang