10x engineer is a relative comparison based on the engineers around you, not a universal ranking. Most of this can be explained by managers who dont know what they don&#x27;t know. (Never hired or managed hundreds or thousands)<p>I have met, hired, and worked with engineers of all stripes and tend to think this idea is just a mental way of covering that &quot;we have a guy our company or team relies on to a high risk degree&quot;.<p>10x engineers are a bad sign because it means she or he probably belongs with a better crew... And someday either they&#x27;ll realize that or leave for another reason, exposing our over reliance on them.