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We’ve all heard about the mythical 10x engineer: the engineer who is able to write 10x more code, provide 10x more feedback in reviews, and generally land 10x more impact. First, just to put the debate to rest, yes, 10x engineers do exist.
Across 15 years in the industry working with some of the best software engineers at companies like Pinterest and Meta, I’ve worked closely with individuals who have prodigious levels of output and productivity. It’s not just that they get more done: They’re able to solve problems and design solutions that other engineers simply could not do, even with an abundance of time.
What made these engineers so powerful wasn’t their immense skill; it was their ability to apply it effectively. When I collaborated with 10x engineers, they felt “human” in the sense that I could understand what they were thinking and why they made the decisions they did. So if it’s not skill that separates the best engineers from the rest of us, what is the difference?
Perhaps a better question to ask is, why aren’t more 10x engineers? I think there are two reasons:
- A lack of domain expertise. If you are brand new to a tech stack or domain, you will face a steep learning curve for the first few months or years. Conversely, if you dedicate years of your career to deeply study a particular problem, you will naturally have more intuition and insight than other engineers. It doesn’t really matter what the domain is, whether distributed systems, AI model training, or mobile app performance: Having expertise allows you to solve problems that few others can.
- A lack of influence. Success as an engineer is not simply about your intellectual horsepower. Equally important is your ability to advocate for a direction and convince others. Purely writing code, for example, only gets you so far: You need to be able to influence large groups of engineers. If you’re difficult to work with, you can’t be a 10x engineer.
Note that the points above are often correlated. If you’re brand new to a company, you likely lack both expertise and influence. Over time, you start to understand the intricacies of a particular system on your team, and what the constraints are. While you do this, you build deeper relationships with key people in the organization, who begin to trust you more as the resident expert.
It’s clear to me that 10x engineers do exist, and in fact, AI will give the top engineers an even greater ability to get things done. We’ll soon have 100x and 1000x engineers.
But it’s also clear to me that your multiplicative power as an engineer is context-dependent: Your impact depends on your expertise and influence within your company.
—Rahul.
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