10x Engineers vs -10x Burdens

I've been reflecting on our engineers’ diverse impact on our projects and the true meaning behind labels like "10x engineer". Over the years, many articles have discussed this concept, some labeling it a myth and others saying you need to have at least one on your team. It’s a hot topic; understandably, this term often sparks debate. Still, I think it's essential to understand the real value a developer brings to the team beyond any numerical label and their leetCode score.

I’m part of the group that thinks 10x engineers are great, and no, it’s not a myth. But I have a more nuanced perspective — I don't think 10x engineer has anything to do with coding and more than that, I think anyone can be a 10x engineer. It’s not a personal quality; it’s a cumulative effect of all the small decisions you make as a software developer — the tools you choose, the way you debug, the way you act with your team mates.

In my early career, I witnessed first-hand how an average developer can turn into a 10x engineer overnight: We had a high-load project with thousands of requests per second that was developed by a small team — it was a search module that had to work fast, and scan a lot of data to match a multidimensional query. Everything was smooth at first glance; the code was running in production for some time, but some users complained that they randomly received no response.

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