Thread by @phillip_webb

10x engineers

Developers if you ever come across this rare breed of engineer, run away, run away quite quickly. You increase the odds of your personal stress quite significantly.

OK, here's a a facepalm question.

How do you spot a 10x engineer?

1. 10x engineers hate meeting people. They think it's a waste of time and they hate interacting with other so called humans. If they meet someone, it's because they need to feel superior and want other staff to belittle.

2. The 10x engineer is highly irregular. They just don't eat enough fiber. They are always missing all-hands meetings because of an unexpected call of nature. I'd give it 5 minutes if I were you.

3. 10x engineers laptop screen background color is black. Their windows are black. Their scollbars are black. Their fonts are black. They don't need no sinking colors. Their keyboard will often have the ctrl, c and v keys worn out.

4. 10x engineers know every line of code that's gone into production at the assembly level. If a QA person says something like "It no worky" the 10x engineer knows precisely the offset in the binary that needs to be changed with a hex editor.

5. Most 10x engineers are full-full-stack engineers. For them code is code is code is code. If you ask a 10x engineer to make an HTML element <blink> they will first write an operating system, networking stack, new internet protocol, web browser, markup language.

6. 10x engineers can convert thought to code and back to thought again in their head before you've even thought to ask what the hell they were thinking.

7. 10x engineers rarely look at or ask for help. They don't need no documentation and they don't even know what stackoverflow.com is. What's stackoverflow.com? I wasn't looking at stackoverflow.com? Locks screen.

8. 10x engineers are always learning new pointless shit. If there's a blockchain JavaScript Kubernetes available, they've already installed it on your machine and changed your password. They just gobble that crap up.

9. 10x engineers are poor mentors, colleagues and human beings. They can't teach others this shit. They've forgotten more than you can even remember. For gods sake, don't let them interview anyone.

10. 10x engineers don't hack things. Oh no. No. Definitely not. They know stuff before it's happened, anticipated it, asked it to meet them in a dark alley and already beaten the living crap out of it. Do be asking them to write no sticking design docs.

11. 10x engineers rarely job hunt. They know that 10x engineers don't really exist and they don't want to make their life miserable by actually having to be accountable. If you come across them, hold them, squeeze them, never ever leave them. Nah, forget that. Fire their ass!