I think you hit the nail on the head. I worked with 10x’s multiple times but there was also something off.
One colleague couldn’t be bothered to show on time. He’d still deliver but everyone was stressed because he could get lost for weeks. That moved him away from all more critical projects.
Other pivoted all the time. 1 week in - pivot - 2 months different attempt - pivot. Code was still used in other places until one day he decided to pivot his life and was literally MIA for 2 years (with police search etc.). He resurfaced in other country with different life.
Not so long ago I worked with dev whose output was mind blowing, he was closing stuff 10x faster than any other. Business gave him multiple raises throughout the year. He left for greener pastures though so we had to pick up his work and it was _bad_. Hard code everywhere, hard data, no abstractions. Adding metrics took weeks where they should take 1-2 days as it was standard process. Upon further analysis he got so fast because he ignored most of the development consensus. Ironically he always paired with 0.1x or short term contractors who didn’t care during reviews.
One colleague couldn’t be bothered to show on time. He’d still deliver but everyone was stressed because he could get lost for weeks. That moved him away from all more critical projects.
Other pivoted all the time. 1 week in - pivot - 2 months different attempt - pivot. Code was still used in other places until one day he decided to pivot his life and was literally MIA for 2 years (with police search etc.). He resurfaced in other country with different life.
Not so long ago I worked with dev whose output was mind blowing, he was closing stuff 10x faster than any other. Business gave him multiple raises throughout the year. He left for greener pastures though so we had to pick up his work and it was _bad_. Hard code everywhere, hard data, no abstractions. Adding metrics took weeks where they should take 1-2 days as it was standard process. Upon further analysis he got so fast because he ignored most of the development consensus. Ironically he always paired with 0.1x or short term contractors who didn’t care during reviews.