> Linus wrote git in days, and it was way better SVN.
Linus designed and coded some data structures, and some basic utilities to manipulate and store them, in just a few days - based on a fundamentally better model and as a replacement for an existing product they could no longer use. Designing and developing git into a usable product and system took a whole lot longer and involved thousands of people.
The examples you cite are all similarly flawed gross simplifications or mischaracterisations.
Instead of being pedantic, it would be better to describe how the examples are flawed, so we could have had a discussion. But you think "nah let's be pedantic".
I urge you to reconsider not being pedantic next time
And what Linus initially wrote was definitely a usable product. The product has evolved more since then, but that doesn't mean the initial version doesn't work. Actually most of the original code still exists.
Back to the original point, this is the example of a >10x engineer (by impact, coding speed, innovation) who conceived, wrote a popular software in days, grew the community, and grew it to the insane popularity today. Only a handful of engineers in the world could ever achieve this kind of things.
I'm going to ignore the personal attack and get right to the point. If you redefine '10X' to involve impact, speed, or innovation, then you're going to invite external factors of chance (popularity, adoption, etc) and the work of others in building the tools the individual engineer uses - albeit perhaps more effectively than others. Further, they did not 'write' a 'popular software' in days - it was an early prototype that took years to gain the momentum it has now, as I was saying. Trying to credit Linus for all of git is very much like trying to say that the author of a book on which a critically acclaimed movie is based is an amazing filmmaker. You simply can't credit single people for the work done by more than one person. Nuclear though they may have been to the work being there, their impact is far less than you would suggest. There are >10X teams and times and there are engineers who fit particular >10X teams and who are more likely to fit others, but there are no lone >10X engineers.
Why is 10x anything such a skeptical concept? We see it everywhere.
We see it in quality, impact, and effort.
Linus wrote git in days, and it was way better SVN.
Messi is probably 100x better in terms of stats and skills and 100000x better in terms of earning when comparing to an average soccer player
Apple's iPod is 10x better than Zune and makes 100000x more money.
A great entrepreneur is probably 10000x better (more impact more money) than a good one.
It is not strange that one engineer would be 10x of the other engineer in certain aspects.