10x Engineer
While the article correctly highlights the lack of rigorous scientific studies on 10x engineers, it also generalizes a bit too much from anecdote to make the argument that they are mythical creatures. A more reasonable argument is that  the hypothetical existence of 10x engineers explains little about the productivity of most organizations.<p>Personally, in the couple decades I have been in this business working in countless companies in Silicon Valley, I have met a few individuals that I think could be accurately characterized as 10x engineers. An important point is that they are not productive at just one type of development but genuine computer science and software engineering polymaths. They are incredibly rare but they do exist for all practical purposes. People that are 10x engineers never seem to think of themselves that way, it is how the other engineers think of them. It advertises itself; if you have to tell people you are a 10x engineer, "ninja", "rockstar", etc then you probably are not.<p>I will add that none of the 10x engineers I worked with were burning the candle at both ends. They did not work particularly hard compared to everyone else, they were just extraordinarily effective and consistent at making excellent choices in an engineering context <i>and</i> always worked very well with most engineering teams they needed to work with. I've never seen any of these guys burn out, they've been doing it for decades.<p>I would also suggest that it takes quite a few years of diversified experience before you can be a legit 10x engineer. Consistently making excellent choices requires both breadth and depth of knowledge and experience that you simply can't develop in less than a decade.