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I knew two 10x developers at my previous job. One of them was humble and a great mentor and elevated everyone around him. One was a grump who made everyone around him feel stupid.

Imo toxicity is independent from productivity.




There are plenty of 10x developers who are socially inept but do very well doing work by themselves, and then there are 10x managers who can deal with those devs well enough so they can work effectively enough in team environments. Unfortunately, good 10x managers are rarer than toxic 10x devs (and a real monster is a toxic 10x manager).

There are also devs whose technical skills have outpaced their social skills temporarily, but they get better later...


Same experience. I learned quite a bit simply by sitting next to an exceptionally good and exceptionally nice developer who was at least a decade older than the rest of the team and enjoyed helping others. He rarely got stressed even in crunch times and that put rest of the team at ease.


The simple idea of this being possible, and picturing the scene in my head, gave me a lot of hope. I'm tired of the atmosphere of fear in the office, and I'm tired of how I participate in it.


I’ll add that toxicity is not unique to 10x. Your last line covers that but many people tend to think 1x people are necessarily more humble by virtue of knowing their output relative to the team. (Assuming everyone believes in the 1x/10x thing)

I’ve known plenty of mediocre devs who would be a 0.5x but thought they should be a 10x and made up the difference in unfounded confidence.


We need to look at the role more broadly, being a developer isn't just churning out code. A lot of young talented guys just follow their passion and hack away abstraction after abstraction instead of trying to see what the product really needs. So you could say they're amazingly productive, or you could say they actually provided very little value. And a toxic wreck can't be productive by definition; if you demoralise everyone around you reduce productivity! The fact some people can get away with is a bug in hiring.


The first type you mentioned is a rare gem that should be treasured.




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