i’m glad i learned this week how to spot a “10x engineer” now i know what to look for when hiring to make sure i never have a person like this on my team

in all seriousness i’ve worked with “10x” people like this, exactly as described. yes they produce a lot of code. yes they fix the bugs we discover in production. yes they caused the bugs in the first place by being “above” peer code reviews and working in a vacuum.

yes they are responsible for a lot of the code because they wrote it without input or exposition or documentation or review. of course they’re the only one who can fix it because sometimes it’s a tangled mess that they created and only they can understand.

the original post is not wrong though - having someone on your team like this can speed your product to market. as long as you and your investors are willing to accept the risk of trusting the stability, usability, extensibility, and scale of your application to one fickle person

and also the repercussions on the rest of your team - tolerating people like this will drive any conscientious person away - whether they work with them directly or not. having a bratty “golden child” in engineering will ruin your company’s appeal to marketing, ops, etc