Have you read the article? -10x is not about "accelerating backwards", it's about bringing the project to stand still / significantly slowing it down.

And I have seen this multiple times. People who in one way or another managed to slow down other people. Toxic people can create such an environment that the productive people quit. They don't bring smaller value, not even zero value, they bring negative value to the team/project.

> -1x means the project is rapidly disassembling itself and engineers are losing knowledge and intelligence.

I don't know where you come with this arbitrary interpretation of exactly -1, but yes, that happens to projects.

I know the article is generally just talking about bad engineers. However the topic I started here is more about the term 10x.

>And I have seen this multiple times. People who in one way or another managed to slow down other people. Toxic people can create such an environment that the productive people quit. They don't bring smaller value, not even zero value, they bring negative value to the team/project.

Sure but negative progress or -10x progress or 10x progress is just not realistic. The 10 in the term 10x is the thing that is arbitrary. Not only is it arbitrary it's completely inaccurate.

>I don't know where you come with this arbitrary interpretation of exactly -1, but yes, that happens to projects.

Arbitrary definition of 1x? 1x is default -1x would be the default but backwards. It's anything but average. The 10 on 10x is again the arbitrary constant here. Also, Losing knowledge and intelligence is the equivalent of brain damage so are people banging their heads against walls and shooting up on brain damaging drugs? Doubt it. Productivity stops at zero, negative progress is so rare it's basically non-existent.

Pick one. Can't be both.

> 1x is default -1x would be the default but backwards

Not backwards. In terms of value, 1x is a value produced by 1 typical developer. -1x is a decrease of value.

> Also, Losing knowledge and intelligence is the equivalent of brain damage so are people banging their heads against walls and shooting up on brain damaging drugs?

Organizations lose knowledge all the time because people quit because of e.g. toxicity in the workplace (brought by -10x employees).

I guess I'm done with this conversation, it no longer interests me.

Pick what? I didn't pick anything. I'm just laying out examples.

>Not backwards. In terms of value, 1x is a value produced by 1 typical developer. -1x is a decrease of value.

Yeah so my point is -1x is Not arbitrary. You said it is. I simply said it isn't.

>Organizations lose knowledge all the time because people quit because of e.g. toxicity in the workplace (brought by -10x employees).

That's one way of looking at it. It's valid. But by itself I was referring to an honest employee acting to the best of his capability. Like IQ this part cannot be negative. Things like side effects of a bad actor deliberately damaging the company is not something I was referring to. Overall though this type of thing is hard to measure.

>I guess I'm done with this conversation, it no longer interests me.

Sure. That's fine. The conversation is getting into the nitty gritty of interpretation of words which is pointless imo. I think you're pretty clear about what I'm talking about. All in all though my statistical interpretation is still ultimately correct.

> Pick what?

Arbitrary or unrealistic. Utterly obvious from context; you said "arbitrary and unrealistic", they replied "pick one or the other".

Somewhere else you write about "if you only understood what I wrote". Honestly... This shows that the problem there wasn't with someone else's understanding of English, but yours.