What I Learned Sitting Beside a 10x Engineer for 6 Months

Working with a 10x engineer doesn’t just make you better at coding — it rewires how you think.

What I Learned Sitting Beside a 10x Engineer for 6 Months

“You don’t need to work harder. You need to work smarter — and with intention.”
That was the first thing he told me when I joined his team.

I had heard the term 10x engineer before — usually in tech Twitter debates or startup founder podcasts.

But I had never actually worked beside someone who truly embodied it. That changed six months ago.

For half a year, I sat just one desk away from the most efficient, humble, and wildly effective engineer I’ve ever met. Here’s what I learned — and how those lessons transformed the way I think about software engineering and productivity.

1. Clarity > Cleverness

He rarely wrote code that made you say, “Wow, that’s smart.”
Instead, he wrote code that made you say, “Of course.”

The first time I did a code review on his PR, I was surprised by how simple it all looked. No unnecessary abstractions. No overly generalized helpers. Just clear, purposeful code written with empathy for the next developer.

Lesson: Write code for humans first, machines second. Your future self will thank you.

2. He Debugged Like a Detective, Not a Magician

Watching him debug was like watching Sherlock Holmes examine a crime scene. He asked questions. Created hypotheses. Methodically tested them. And never, ever guessed.

He didn’t just “try things until it worked.” He understood why it was broken before touching a single line of code.

Lesson: Build a mental model of the system before you fix the bug. Understanding beats trial-and-error.

3. Meetings Didn’t Own Him — He Owned Them

He walked into every meeting with a goal.
He left every meeting with clear action items — or asked why the meeting was held in the first place.

He had a personal rule: if a meeting didn’t bring clarity, unblock progress, or align the team — he declined it.

Lesson: Respect your time like it’s billable. Because it is.

4. He Optimized for Leverage, Not Busyness

He wasn’t “always working.” He was always thinking.
He focused on things that had outsized impact:

• Replacing a slow service with a batch job that saved 8 hours/week.
• Writing internal tools that others reused.
• Refactoring messy legacy code no one wanted to touch.

He asked: “What’s the one thing I can do today that saves time for 10 others?”

Lesson: Being a 10x engineer isn’t about doing 10x the work — it’s about enabling 10x results.

5. Feedback Was His Superpower

He didn’t just receive feedback well — he asked for it. Constantly.

• “Was that review helpful?”
• “Did I miss anything in our sync?”
• “Can you think of a better way to handle this logic?”

He treated feedback like fuel, not fire.

Lesson: Feedback isn’t criticism. It’s calibration.

6. He Made Thinking Visible

Whiteboards, diagrams, comments, checklists — his thought process was always visible. He didn’t just ship solutions. He showed the thinking behind them. This meant:

• Faster onboarding for new teammates.
• Easier debugging later.
• More trust from PMs and stakeholders.

Lesson: Don’t just build. Explain what, why, and how — clearly and visually.

7. He Knew When to Say “No”

He didn’t people-please.
He didn’t overpromise.
And he didn’t say yes just to avoid conflict.

He would say:

• “That sounds useful, but it’s not the most urgent problem.”
• “We should validate this idea before we build it.”
• “Let’s not optimize until we measure first.”

Lesson: Being effective means protecting your focus — and sometimes, disappointing people politely.

8. He Was Unshakably Calm

Deadlines, outages, angry clients — he never panicked.
His response: slow down, breathe, assess, act.

His mindset was simple: “If I panic, I stop thinking clearly. If I stay calm, I can fix it.”

Lesson: Your state of mind in a crisis is more important than your skillset.

9. He Treated Mentorship Like a Multiplier

He mentored not by lecturing, but by listening.
He’d ask, “How would you approach this?” before suggesting improvements.

He didn’t hoard knowledge — he transferred it.

Lesson: The best engineers don’t just write code. They grow the people around them.

10. He Wasn’t Obsessed with Being a 10x Engineer

He didn’t wear the label.
He didn’t tweet threads about his workflow.
He just showed up every day with discipline, curiosity, and kindness.

Lesson: Greatness is quiet. Loud ego isn’t a prerequisite for high impact.

Final Thoughts

Spending six months beside a 10x engineer changed the trajectory of my career.
Not because I learned fancy frameworks or clever hacks — but because I learned how to think, communicate, and act like an engineer with intention.

The good news?

You don’t need to be a genius to become 10x.
You just need to be consistently thoughtful.

And if you’re lucky enough to sit beside someone like that — soak it all in. It might be the best investment in your engineering journey.

Thanks for reading.
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