I think there are different flavors of 10x. The people that I've worked with that I would consider to be of the 10x variety weren't the kind of 'trail of destru

I think there are different flavors of 10x. The people that I've worked with that I would consider to be of the 10x variety weren't the kind of 'trail of destruction' type that some people tend to talk about. I worked with a guy, great engineer, great guy, deep domain knowledge and a very solid understanding all the way through the stack. He was a great mentor and only barked when he was absolutely too slammed to help, which was rare. The thing that always amazed me is not only did he consult on all the really difficult stuff and ship it, but frequently you would come back to code you wrote recently and it would look nicer, cleaner and just a little more polished. He'd been in there leaving not a trail of destruction, but a trail of cleaning. Now, I have also heard of the trail of destruction kind too. They're more like -10x though. They just pump it out really fast, but super low quality. IMO that's a bad kind of 10x to be. It's 10x the recklessness. A truly great engineer is one that can help the team and the company avoid writing as much code as possible. As such I don't consider the 'trail of destruction' 10xers to be 10xers, but rather really fast cowboys.