I have a buddy that helped me out with some DIY/construction projects. He thinks he is a 10x as well since he gets so much done so quickly. He will finish up and sit down saying its done. I go look and every tool is literally everywhere, garbage and debris thrown about, and half the stuff is incorrectly installed as he didn't think he needed to read the instructions and missed key details.

That's someone who thinks they are 10x not someone who is.

I think that would apply to many of those 10x'ers were talking about here tho.

But they aren't 10x'ers. You could say they are wannabe 10x'ers or 10x mess makers, or "10x'ers".

But can we stop saying people who are good at there job are actually bad at their job and being mediocre actually means you are great?

Like I know I'm being pedantic but this kind of culture is toxic to everyone.

Edit: sorry for ranting under your comment. I'm sure you are a normal person just trying to get through your day. I just had to scream somewhere

You're fine no worries. I think you are making my point.

People who claim they are 10x'ers are often not. They are mess makers or wannabes. They appear 10x to those who do not take messes or tech debt into account.

You screaming (to use your lingo) that my buddy above is not a 10x is what the rest of us have been screaming about our co-workers!

I'm not claiming people can't be 10x'ers. Nor am I saying being good is actually bad.

Katt from trpc, mantine lead developer, Tanner from tanstack, Anders from typescript, Jose from elixir, antires from redis. There plenty of 10x dev examples.

In any creative industry Price's is well known phenomen. 50% of work is done by square root of people. But in reality there large number of problems that cannot be solved by average developer.

That why people that build tooling, compilers, important libraries and frameworks make often 100 times more impact. They increase productivity of everyone

Anyone that has been doing this job knows that the majority of average developers in any workplace will also cut corners every once in a while and leave a lot of tech debt to others, with very few exceptions.

This myth that more productive developers are somehow worse and will ruin projects is just rationalization without any ground in reality.

The myth I’m criticizing is that sloppiness has a stronger correlation with being productive. It doesn’t. Plenty of slow developers who suck.

This is just rationalization.