Oh I'm sure they exist, that's why I said "a lot", not "all". My point is more about how managers perceive the employees they manage. They all want to believe that they found the goose that lays the golden eggs, but in reality so many perceived rockstar engineers are just over-confident or over-eager people mass producing garbage.

That's the important parallel with using AI in production: on the surface it may seem like the solution to all productivity problems, but in reality it still takes a lot of human brainpower to review, assess, fix and maintain whatever the AI model spits out. Especially since generative AIs like to present their work with supreme confidence, and it's getting increasingly hard to separate the chaff from the wheat.

I think a sizeable % of engineers can be 10x-ers as ICs / leads - but it's kind of an "in the zone" thing, when they're experienced in the stack and the product, can navigate the org, are motivated and aren't held back by issues with team or management (or personal issues etc).

But it's like growing plants, in the sense that it only takes one crucial element to be missing to limit growth (or "output").

I've met a few ppl who were _reliable_ 10xers (could navigate a much wider range of techs / domains / situations than others) but I've seen even the best crash and burn at times when the circumstances aren't right.

There are also 100x engineers and probably even some 1000x+ engineers.

These are the kind of people who cook up something like git when they take a one year sabbatical from their main project.

Or even hardware people like Jim Keller.

10x engineers are plentiful if you define the median engineer as 1x. There are a LOT of mediocre engineers out there to draw the median down.