"Productivity" could be defined as the value (typically monetary value) that the value of the company is generating (before salaries) based on the contribution of that resource(engineer in this case), per unit time. Future income should be calculated using a present-day-value approach.
The productivity of a single engineer could be defined as the reduction in company value generation from removing that person from the company (assuming the company is large enough to have multiple people available in each role). Rank order this, and you can define the 10x as those whose removal would cost the company (before salaries) >10x more than the removal of the median contributor.
Note that this definition is based on productivity within a given company. A single person could be a 10x engineer in one company, and a 1x engineer in another. Some companies require engineers with very deep understanding of compter science, maths, statistics or physics. Others benefit from engineers that are domain experts within their business domain, and yet again other companies may primarily need engineers who understand and can work with people of all backgrounds.
"Productivity" could be defined as the value (typically monetary value) that the value of the company is generating (before salaries) based on the contribution of that resource(engineer in this case), per unit time. Future income should be calculated using a present-day-value approach.
The productivity of a single engineer could be defined as the reduction in company value generation from removing that person from the company (assuming the company is large enough to have multiple people available in each role). Rank order this, and you can define the 10x as those whose removal would cost the company (before salaries) >10x more than the removal of the median contributor.
Note that this definition is based on productivity within a given company. A single person could be a 10x engineer in one company, and a 1x engineer in another. Some companies require engineers with very deep understanding of compter science, maths, statistics or physics. Others benefit from engineers that are domain experts within their business domain, and yet again other companies may primarily need engineers who understand and can work with people of all backgrounds.