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.

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.

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.

Newton was a 1000x

I'd argue he was 9.81x

I think it's more important to measure his changing contribution as a function of time.

>but also they were measuring between best and worst, not best and average as it's used nowadays.

Depending on the environment, I can imagine the worst devs being net negative.

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.