Recently, I came across a post on LinkedIn with the eye-catching title, “I think I’ve met a 10x engineer.” But as I read through the post, I started to have doubts. The author described how one of their colleagues had managed to fix a bunch of complex bugs in a short amount of time, which left them in awe. 🤔

But is that really what defines a 10x engineer? It brought back memories of my own experience as a so-called 10x engineer during my first job!

🗯️ Preamble

This took place during my very first job as a Unity software engineer at IMI Technology (which, by now, should have shut down). My primary responsibility was to develop board games.I joined the company mainly because it was conveniently close to home and the pay was reasonable, so I didn’t give it much thought. While some might find game development either intriguing or off-putting, this post isn’t about that industry. It’s purely a reflection of my own experience in software development.

✏️ Overview

The team was made up of 8 people: 5 senior engineers with over 10 years of experience, 1 junior developer, and 2 entry-level engineers. The roles were divided like this:

  • 3 senior engineers + 1 beginner developing servers in Java
  • 1 senior engineer working with Phaser to develop web game clients
  • 1 senior engineer + me (entry-level) developing the Unity game client
  • 1 entry-level engineer learning the ropes (I’m not really sure what his specific role was)

As you can see, I was tasked with working on the Unity game client alongside a senior engineer. Ironically, our team was on the brink of being disbanded. Apparently, our boss wasn’t happy with our progress, and the project was taking too long. Unbeknownst to me at the time, the entire department was on the chopping block. 😒

📊 Comparison

Within our team, I handled all the core game development on my own, while another engineer focused on the UI. I completed the entire game in about a month (around 20 days), replicating all the content from the web client with ease. For comparison, it took the senior engineer 10 months to finish the web client.

Of course, this is an unfair comparison. The web client engineer had to learn Phaser from scratch and develop the first version, which led to higher communication overhead. I just had to replicate what was already built. 🤔

Still, when looking at the total development time alone (without diving into the nuances), it was a striking difference: 1 month vs. 10 months! 😬

💬 Conclusion

This happened back in July 2019 (nearly 5 years ago), so the details are a bit hazy, and this post is relatively short. Despite that, I wanted to document the experience because it’s unlikely I’ll go through something like this again—at least, I hope not! 💦

I also want to stress that my former colleagues were extremely skilled, and I never questioned their professionalism. From what I saw, they were absolutely top-tier in their fields! 💯