&gt;The article goes on to suggest that there are &quot;1000x&quot; engineers who can do things other engineers cannot do.<p>It&#x27;s a very easy statement to make but really hard to prove. I will probably never write a solid OS kernel, but I&#x27;m also not going to spend 5 years trying to learn all of the concepts and hard-won knowledge just to prove that I can when I really don&#x27;t want to be doing it in the first place. Especially when you can back out of that original argument by saying &quot;Oh, well you were 10x, you just didn&#x27;t know it&quot;.<p>I also haven&#x27;t read too much about career progression for engineers which plays into all of this, i.e., what percentage of 10x should I be after 6 months? 1 year? 5? 10? What skills should I possess on that career timeline? The answer right now is pretty much open-ended.