The best amplifier I've met was hired as a junior coder to my team and was paired with a couple of 10x coders on a project with a client who was "hands-on" and loved to micro-manage, having been a software developer themselves a long time ago.
The Amplifier's coding output wasn't that good, but the team as a whole was doing better than before so I investigated.
Turns out the 10x guys weren't that keen on communicating with ... well anyone outside of the team, much less with non-technical clients (or technical clients who loved micromanage). Both were your stereotypical cold pizza and warm cola coders with limited social skills. They could kinda sorta manage the meetings and emails directly from customers but didn't exactly relish it.
The junior hire was more like a 0.5x coder, but had ample social and organisation skills and worked extremely well as a liaison between the team and any external contacts they needed, taking over most "useless" meetings with the product owner and customer.
The junior coder ended up receiving some training and was "promoted" to a Scrum Master/Producer/Project Manager (the exact title escapes me) for the team. Everyone was happy and productive.
Your "Amplifier" is more like what is known as a "Field Applications Engineer" in the Embedded industry i.e. somebody with enough Domain/Technical/Marketing/Sales skills fulfilling a tangible need for the Business. They are more a "Business Process Optimizer" than a "People Amplifier"(a term i made up :-) who i define as somebody who can spark creativity/insights/viewpoints etc. which push others forward in their problem-solving endeavours. It is not merely removing hurdles/book-keeping/time management/liaisoning but an active role involving discussions/brainstorming/idea generation. This cannot be done without bringing some expertise to the table relevant to the problem at hand.
The best amplifier I've met was hired as a junior coder to my team and was paired with a couple of 10x coders on a project with a client who was "hands-on" and loved to micro-manage, having been a software developer themselves a long time ago.
The Amplifier's coding output wasn't that good, but the team as a whole was doing better than before so I investigated.
Turns out the 10x guys weren't that keen on communicating with ... well anyone outside of the team, much less with non-technical clients (or technical clients who loved micromanage). Both were your stereotypical cold pizza and warm cola coders with limited social skills. They could kinda sorta manage the meetings and emails directly from customers but didn't exactly relish it.
The junior hire was more like a 0.5x coder, but had ample social and organisation skills and worked extremely well as a liaison between the team and any external contacts they needed, taking over most "useless" meetings with the product owner and customer.
The junior coder ended up receiving some training and was "promoted" to a Scrum Master/Producer/Project Manager (the exact title escapes me) for the team. Everyone was happy and productive.