10x Engineer

People love to argue about the so-called “10x engineer”, which in the techie world refers to a computer person who produces 10x as much value as the average computer person (when discussing people who write software and their corresponding output). I want to correct something. The 10x engineer is a misnomer because it actually should be “The 100x Engineer”. Not only is the 100x engineer quite real, but most people wildly underestimate the value provided by the very best talent. One reason for this is that the human brain is very bad at understanding probabilities, distribution, compounding returns, and exponential growth.