[heeton]

I've considered "great engineer" a hiring anti-pattern for a decade. (Specifically in the space of product-focussed pre-pmf startups, through into early scale-ups).

I'll take "great communicator", "great co-ordinator", "great collaborator" and "great technical designer" over engineering prowess any day of the week. That's where the 10x gains come from in a team.

Though, on that last point, I think most great engineers I've met are that way because they are great technical designers. It's not something that usually gets filtered for in hiring in my experience.

We have a career framework that I've refined across 4 teams now. 6 areas, and only one of those is "Coding and testing".