That might be a social dynamic thing. Think of how say high school dynamics work. It&#x27;s never the most popular person that puts others down (it doesn&#x27;t do them any good), it&#x27;s the kids that are popular, but not quite.<p>I would not be surprised if this also held true for engineers. 10x engineers already distinguish themselves through their work output. It&#x27;s the 3-5x engineers that are good enough to tell themselves that they produce more than your vanilla engineer, but not good enough that they couldn&#x27;t get lumped up with them. It&#x27;s that uncertainty that produces viciousness in the attempt to remove yourself from that set.<p>Unless your show them that your are a &quot;3+x engineer&quot;, they&#x27;ll try to distance themselves from you to not be tainted by association. I guess it also follows that they will be the ones obsessed with 10+x engineers.<p>Kings aren&#x27;t vicious, it&#x27;s their courts that are.