10x is a measure of impact relative to others. From that definition, I have no doubt it exists. There's a couple ways to find 10x'ers: # A person that does thi

10x is a measure of impact relative to others. From that definition, I have no doubt it exists. There's a couple ways to find 10x'ers: # A person that does things no one else can. A problem requires calculating taxes for an invoice. Someone who computes this programmatically is better than a person who hand calculates everything. A problem requires calculating the area under the curve. Someone who uses calculus is better than someone who only knows algebra and geometry. A problem requires charging a user's credit card once on checkout. Someone who understands idempotent operations is infinitely better. (I was charged 3 times for a single purchase yesterday, and now disputing with the merchant.) # A person that grows the people around them. A person growing teammates to 2x or 3x their previously level has a cumulative 10x impact. This can be teaching how to approach problems, choose the right abstractions, make engineering tradeoffs, manage risk, write robust code that is easily testable, etc. # A person that makes others more efficient. If the average dev waits 1 hr for a build, and someone reduces that to 5 minutes then they have saved: x devs * y builds / day * 55 min This has indirect effects such as maintaining flow state, minimizing context switching, etc. # A person that brings down the teammates. A dev that builds fast enough (5x), but grows tech debt such that the rest of the team operates at 0.5x. By definition they are a 10x relative to their teammates. :P