No, intelligence is not the easy part. We are talking about uncommon intelligence and it is the hard part. And they ones that have it are often lacking in other areas, such as social skills. And the ones that have social skills, and other traits often aren't 10x.
Put it this way: of the handful of 10x engineers I’ve met in my life, it was never intelligence that was the differentiator or what impressed me. That’s a commodity as far as I’m concerned. Once you pass 140 IQ it’s mostly diminishing returns, compared to the outsized impact of the other dimensions. It’s always been the persistence and consistency that has stood out the most to me.
