I agree. I think a motivated engineer is far better than a talented one. Some really talented/experienced engineers might find day-to-day programming tasks triv

I agree. I think a motivated engineer is far better than a talented one. Some really talented/experienced engineers might find day-to-day programming tasks trivial/mundane and their biggest challenge is staying focused - It's good to have a few such people on your team (to help guide big technical decisions and encourage good practices - They are great supporting roles) but in terms of raw productivity, you'd get more out of a less talented/experienced engineer who feels more challenged by the work. In my opinion, engineering talent is based on three things: - The range of projects that the engineer has worked on during his/her career. - The total number of hours spent coding in their career. - Their attitude towards learning. I think this 'innate' 10x developer idea is just bullcrap. The best way to identify a great engineer is to check how many years of experience they have, how many companies they have worked for (more variety is better) and their attitude to learning. If a developer says "I like to be challenged by my work" - That's generally a good sign that they enjoy learning; combine this with their total years and range of experiences and you can infer how much they know today.