[nsfyn55]

I don't think the author is a 1x programmer. He has learned the first secret of 10x programming. It's not about being a genius programmer. Its about being an efficiency expert and a problem solver. Soft skills play an outsized role here. I have seen immensely talented developers with hard skills for days manage to deliver nothing over long periods of time.

Learning that rules are guidelines not religious artifacts handed to us via burning bush is a big step. I can't tell you how many programmers I've seen hobble their own productivity by having overly aggressive code reviews, strict style guidelines, or requiring more testing than is necessary.

Being an outstanding software engineer is 99% knowing when to tenaciously stand your ground("storing state that way will not allow us to scale horizontally. It will save us a few hours now but in order to achieve our larger objectives will take 1000x the effort to unwind; we have to find another way") and when exerting control isn't helping("You can't put this simple, but incredibly important, time sensitive piece of software into production until it has been reviewed by our 6 committees, is re-written to use the companies globally enforced, yet questionably valuable style guideline, and has 113% code coverage")

[goalieca]

He's working at amazon so perhaps their talent pool is a little better than the average non-coastal company.