Yeah that was an interesting read. I like the concept of a -10x engineer because they definitely exist (in my mind it is someone whose work moves you farther away from the project goals, rather than closer to them). But a lot of the bullets sounded like stuff bad managers do, not bad engineers.
Off the top of my head these are the most common two "negative engineer" behaviors I have seen
1) Biggest one: an engineer who is not experienced at architecting complex systems, goes and architects one when complexity was not required in the first place. This is the key to never shipping and destroying entire companies.
2) Close runner up: an engineer who writes code that is inscrutable and therefore unmaintainable (always by others, often by themselves as well). This is the key to your product dying a slow death over several years.
There are negative engineers doing this stuff ALL. THE. TIME. EVERYWHERE. Despite unquantifiable volumes of both ink and blood spilled trying to prevent them.
Off the top of my head these are the most common two "negative engineer" behaviors I have seen
1) Biggest one: an engineer who is not experienced at architecting complex systems, goes and architects one when complexity was not required in the first place. This is the key to never shipping and destroying entire companies.
2) Close runner up: an engineer who writes code that is inscrutable and therefore unmaintainable (always by others, often by themselves as well). This is the key to your product dying a slow death over several years.
There are negative engineers doing this stuff ALL. THE. TIME. EVERYWHERE. Despite unquantifiable volumes of both ink and blood spilled trying to prevent them.