Yes, an order of magnitude literally means 10x. But in my experience, in common speech it's often used to convey an approximation. i.e. 'Changing this will decr

Yes, an order of magnitude literally means 10x. But in my experience, in common speech it's often used to convey an approximation. i.e. 'Changing this will decrease performance of that endpoint by an order of magnitude', when it's really somewhere around 10x. If someone said 'decrease performance by 10x' that seems much more concrete to me.