10x sounds nice which is probably why it stuck, but it came from actual research which found the difference was larger than 10x - but also they were measuring between best and worst, not best and average as it's used nowadays.
All of this is hard to quantify. How much better than the average engineer is John Carmack, or Rob Pike or Linus? I consider myself average-ish and I don't think there's any world in which I could do what those guys did no matter how much time you gave me (especially without the hindsight knowledge of the creations). So I'd say they're all infinitely better than me.
I guess that makes Newton a 10x scientist. Really puts in perspective how utterly unrealistic it is to be looking to hire exclusively 10x programmers - the true 10x'ers are legends, not just regular devs who type a bit faster.
It would be more sensible if the "10x" moniker was dropped altogether, and we just went back to calling these people what they've always been: "geniuses". Then there might be more realistic expectations of only finding them among 1% of the population.
And how much better are they than your average engineer when plopped into a mediocre organization where they aren’t the political and technical top dog? I would guess they would all quit within a week.
Good engineers don't stay in mediocre organizations, mediocre ones do. Do you think these "top dogs" were at the top of their game from day one? They all learned, just like everyone else; talent just gave them a higher ceiling.
And they get promoted too. Multiple times I've seen people get promoted for decisions that doom the company years later. Considering all the various departments and people that go into supporting these net negative engineers, more people are net negative than they think.
It highly depends on the circumstances. In over 30 years in the industry I met 3 people that were many times more productive than everyone else around them, even more than 10 times. What does this translate to? Well, there are some extraordinary people around, very rare and you cannot count on finding some and, when you find them, it is almost impossible to retain them because management and HR never agree to pay them enough to stay around.
He doesn't believe there are hundreds of Fabrice Bellard clones who think working at your company wouldn't be a waste of their time. The myth might be that thinking about 10X is useful in any sense. You can't plan around one gracing you with their presence and you won't be able to retain them when they do.
Thinking about it personally, a 10X label means I'm supposedly the smartest person in the room and that I'm earning 1/10th what I should be. Both of those are huge negatives.
