Why AI Will Create 10x Marketers, Not Just 10x Engineers

A “10x engineer” — a widely accepted concept in tech — purportedly has 10 times the impact of the average engineer. But we don’t seem to talk about 10x marketers, 10x recruiters, or 10x financial analysts. As more jobs become AI enabled, I think this will change, and there will be a lot more “10x professionals.” There aren’t already more 10x professionals because, in many roles, the gap between the best and the average worker has a ceiling. No matter how athletic a supermarket checkout clerk is, they’re not likely to scan groceries so fast that customers get out of the store 10x faster. Similarly, even the best doctor is unlikely to make patients heal 10x faster than an average one (but to a sick patient, even a small difference is worth a lot). In many jobs, the laws of physics place a limit on what any human or AI can do (unless we completely reimagine that job). But for many jobs that primarily involve applying knowledge or processing information, AI will be transformative. In a few roles, I’m starting to see tech-savvy individuals coordinate a suite of technology tools to do things differently and start to have, if not yet 10x impact, then easily 2x impact. I expect this gap…