The concept of the “10x engineer” has gotten so popular and overused that people don’t even meme about it anymore. Yet when thinking about it, people still tend to focus mostly on the extra value that these engineers bring in typical situations, when the business is under normal operations. They are either incredibly more productive than their peers (10x individual output), or they act as amplifiers on team productivity (10x team output). But for startups, especially ones in the early stages, atypical or crises situations are abundant, and the ability to deal with them effectively can mean either life or death for the company. Engineers (or any team member, really) who can help you survive through these crises may not be 10x in the traditional sense (e.g. their productivity under normal situations may “only” be 2x), but nonetheless provide 10x the value to the company. Here are a few of these alternative types of 10x engineers.

When you are not large or mature enough to have proper on-call schedules, they are the ones reliably available within minutes of some escalation, even on weekends, late nights, or vacations, and have enough expertise on the system to help resolve the situation quickly. Of course, you should never abuse this availability.

When you have suffered an unexpected loss of another critical team member, they are the ones with enough flexibility, experience, and drive to jump into the mess to bridge the recruiting gap. Even if it’s another team, different tech stack, or even separate product line.

When you have to deal with a crisis elsewhere in the company (let’s face it, in a startup this is pretty much always), they are the ones that give you peace of mind when leaving the team in their hands. Their leadership skills, knowledge, and general ability to deal with chaos, while not perfect, are enough to keep the team on track while you take your eyes off and focus on fighting your separate fire.