Knowledge work is much closer to a power law distribution than a normal one. That is, there are indeed a handful of 10x engineers, but it's not a ton of 1x and

Knowledge work is much closer to a power law distribution than a normal one. That is, there are indeed a handful of 10x engineers, but it's not a ton of 1x and some 0.1x. It's overwhelmingly 0.1x. This paper does a good job of showing just how dominant the 10x are in areas with unambiguous and legible outcomes (tenure of politicians, number of Emmy wins, etc.) http://www.hermanaguinis.com/PPsych2012.pdf http://www.hermanaguinis.com/PPsych2012.pdf