10x engineer stories never include:

- Said "I don't know, but I'll find out" instead of assuming
- Advocated for realistic deadlines rather than heroic sprints
- Handled tech debt before it became a crisis
- Documented how the last outage _really_ happened so someone else could learn

There are engineers that do these things, but they’re mere 1x engineers.

They do the thankless work so someone else can have a normal day.