Why not both? There's at least a factor of 3x difference between the volume of the most prolific programmers I know and the least. If John Carmack ships the pro

Why not both? There's at least a factor of 3x difference between the volume of the most prolific programmers I know and the least. If John Carmack ships the product in 1/10th the time of Average Joe, I would call him a 10x engineer regardless of whether he picked a smarter design or if he simply implemented the dumb design 10x faster (or anything in between, obviously).