To "strive to be a 0.1x engineer" means that whenever you are presented with an option, you intentionally choose the worst option; the one which requires the mo

To "strive to be a 0.1x engineer" means that whenever you are presented with an option, you intentionally choose the worst option; the one which requires the most work, solves the problem in an inefficient way, doesn't align with the direction of the project and which will require constant maintenance and will need to be rewritten within a year or 2. 10x developers tend to code really slowly, much more slowly than 1x and 0.1x developers (especially when working on the critical parts of the project). What makes them 10x is that once they've written some code, it solves the problem in a near optimal way, it aligns well with the direction of the project (it's easy to build upon), it doesn't require much or any maintenance and it doesn't need to be rewritten for a very long time (e.g. 5 years or more provided that there is no crazy startup pivot on the business side). This also highlights an important point that not all companies need 10x developers. If the company wants to build a large but straight forward project (a lot of work but without any significant technical challenges), you may not need a 10x developer; you may be better off just hiring a bunch of juniors who can put together a disposable MVP quickly. 10x devs are good when you have a sufficiently complex project; which I would argue are most projects, but not all. A 2x developer is like a sprinter. A 10x developer is more like a marathon runner.