The 10x engineer debate has surfaced again, to the delight of the internet.
10x engineers are fun to talk about (and do exist, for what it's worth!). But there is a lot of nuance missing here, particularly concerning where that engineer's product is in its lifecycle.
A product that is very early in its lifecycle has the characteristics of a multiplicative system. Multiplicative systems have a special property, which is that if any part of the system is a zero, the result of the entire system is a zero (eg: 12 * 5 * 0 * 10 = 0). For an early stage product, this means that if your architecture or product-market fit or distribution (etc.) aren't right, your product is sunk.
A product that is in a more mature stage of it's lifecycle starts to take on some of the characteristics of an additive system. Additive systems can have zeros in them without summing to zero (eg: 12 + 5 + 0 + 10 = 27). Yes, you could still have a catastrophic event that takes the product to zero, so it's not a purely additive system, but the failure of single features or strategies don't immediately sink the ship.
This matters because the type of system impacts the calculation of an engineer's impact. In a mature product you have 10x engineers that are just way more productive and creative than other engineers, and help the product to make step function changes. But in a new product, you have a totally different dynamic, which is that engineers can make the difference between a product living or dying. I have worked with engineers that again and again can turn a 0 in to a 1 (or even a 0.1) and keep the product viable. That impact actually can't be calculated:
(1 - 0) / 0 = 🤯
This is a pretty simplistic model for thinking about engineering impact, but suffice to say the 10x meme is selling some engineers short.