To be a 10x engineer, you don&#x27;t have to be 10x smarter.  There are a lot of ways to get to an overall multiplier of 10x.<p>You can be 2x smarter and 2x more experienced and have 2x better research skills and 1.25x better administrative skills&#x2F;support (time management, office layout, etc.) with the net result of 10x effectiveness.<p>You can be 12.2% better in 20 different but mutually-reinforcing skill areas.<p>Or, thought of a different way, an ordinary engineer might solve 90 problems easily but get bottlenecked on 10 challenges.  You can approach 10x by solving 99 problems easily and only bottlenecking on one.  Being an outlier isn&#x27;t necessarily a matter of one big advantage, but can be about combining a lot of small advantages.