I disagree. Ideas don’t speak, and work doesn’t speak. People do. Being a 10x engineer isn’t just about having great ideas, it’s about having great impact.
Sometimes I hear ICs say with some pride that “I’m not interested in playing office politics”. I promise you they will lose out to the engineers who are able to self advocate, and coalition-build.
You look at gaining recognition for good ideas as a zero sum game that requires self promotion.
If you develop a good original idea that solves a problem and it gets implemented, you have created positive impact without self promotion. If you're not concerned with public perception, then the discussion stops right here.
Someone can take credit for your idea to gain perception that it was their original idea. But in the end, someone who self promotes that can't come up with original ideas will eventually lose their believability factor and will be unable to promote themselves much further.
The crux is in the “and it gets implemented” part. Teams have a limited bandwidth, so what gets implemented absolutely is a zero sum game, that’s why backlog prioritization exists. In order for your idea to get implemented, you have to advocate for it, and convince others to do the same.
Writing great code and delivering useful side-projects can make you a 2-5x engineer. If you want to be a 10x engineer, you have to scale your impact beyond what you can do alone
Edit: maybe your great idea is actually something that you can implement on your own, such as a test suite or a tool. You still need to change other peoples behavior. You need to convince people to try it.
I'm speaking specifically to the example given by the author.
He was approached by an engineer that saw a critical flaw in the software that goes beyond simple "backlog prioritization".
The engineer "quietly" escalated his concerns by showing a thoughtful approach to fixing a global problem that goes beyond his assignment, that if left unsolved can cause problems for everyone.
Given the managers experience, he understood the engineers intrinsic motivation to do good (not biased in self promotion) and believed that the idea would speak for itself and gain the confidence of other engineers, which it did.
This approach is antithetical to what you described. The engineer did not advocate for himself or his idea, he identified a bigger problem that was far more important than his assignment. He brought the idea to leadership out of concern, to deal with conflicting priorities above him. He was not caught up in politics or transactional thinking.
The message the author is trying to convey, people with significant talent that have higher order values, are not concerned with labels such as "wanting to be a 10x engineer". They just focus on what they believe are the most important problems that they can solve that benefits everyone, not just themselves.
These people are truly rare and your argument that playing politics is necessary to promote ideas, proves how rare it is to come across these people.
I disagree. Ideas don’t speak, and work doesn’t speak. People do. Being a 10x engineer isn’t just about having great ideas, it’s about having great impact.
Sometimes I hear ICs say with some pride that “I’m not interested in playing office politics”. I promise you they will lose out to the engineers who are able to self advocate, and coalition-build.