Love the list just a shame to see the 10x myth. 10xers really do exist but it's hard to think about when framing it simply as 10x programmers.
These are people who see two levels of hierarchy requesting something for months and then builds a prototype over the weekend that solves 80% of the problem. Who sees two teams arguing for days back and forth and gets them together to make a decision with them and moves on. Who sees the hours wasted every day on bad tooling and bloat and makes the bold decision to cull and simplify. Who sees a product team losing a quarter building the wrong thing and is not afraid to shut it down with the boss. They know how to hire A players and raise the bar. They know when to hire. They know when to let people go.
They are not 10xers relative to 0.1xers, these are everyday 1xer situations.
They consistently have multiple magnitudes of impact. That's not easy. For most of us that happens a lot less.
These are people who see two levels of hierarchy requesting something for months and then builds a prototype over the weekend that solves 80% of the problem. Who sees two teams arguing for days back and forth and gets them together to make a decision with them and moves on. Who sees the hours wasted every day on bad tooling and bloat and makes the bold decision to cull and simplify. Who sees a product team losing a quarter building the wrong thing and is not afraid to shut it down with the boss. They know how to hire A players and raise the bar. They know when to hire. They know when to let people go.
They are not 10xers relative to 0.1xers, these are everyday 1xer situations.
They consistently have multiple magnitudes of impact. That's not easy. For most of us that happens a lot less.