I can't help you with the loneliness part, because I'm just a married, middle-aged techie with no friends of his own. I don't claim to be a 10x developer either, but I tend to deliver cleaner code faster than many of my colleagues and have been roped into many of the same discussions/meetings as you.
It seems to be a situation where there are a surfeit of apprentices and a plenitude of journeymen, but a relative dearth of actual masters. I could be wrong, but I'm a journeyman myself -- one who can see mastery glittering on the horizon.
The hard part is when people start treating you like the Smartest Person in the Room (SPITR). Keep hearing that often enough, and you'll start to believe it. You'll lose the growth mindset that had gotten you this far and start thinking that it was your intelligence that made you and not your effort. This will righteously fuck you over when you eventually do foul up, because you won't see it coming even if somebody rubs your nose in the bug you committed because you'll be busy thinking, "I can't have introduced such a bug to the codebase. I'm smart."
I can't tell you how to counter this. I once lost a job after being introduced to a bunch of executives as the SPITR and saying, "If I'm the smartest person in the room, the rest of you are fucked." That's what I get for misreading the room and actually thinking that maybe I was the smartest guy there, smart enough to get away with mocking a bunch of execs capable of spending on Sunday brunch what I pay in monthly rent without a second thought.
It's the same trap that a shitload of kids get shoved into once their teachers figure out that they're reading beyond their grade level and must therefore be GIFTED AND TALENTED. They keep hearing from the adults around them that they're so smart and eventually they start to believe it. How could they not; they're often too young to have figured out that the adults around them are only human and all have pre-paid annual passes on the Dunning-Kruger Express. And when these GIFTED AND TALENTED kids finally fail, it feels like their entire world has come to an end because they've leaned so hard on their "intelligence" that they never learned any other way of dealing with the world around them.
I know this from personal experience. I got labeled as "gifted" in the 1980s because I didn't have the sense to hide my hyperlexia from the adults around me.
Getting back to your concerns: I can't help with the loneliness. I've dealt with the stress by discreetly working less. I can see the other developers' velocity, and rather than outshining them by a substantial margin I pace myself so that my metrics are only slightly better than theirs. Work that takes them a solid eight-hour day only takes me two, so I quietly take the rest of the day for myself.
Rather than rail against the fact that I've become Peter Gibbons and only do eight hours of "real work" per week, I'm learning to take advantage of it.
> I've dealt with the stress by discreetly working less.
I have debated this myself. Some other replies said the same thing. It would definitely help me in other parts of my life. How do you handle people messaging you over slack / teams and not responding for hours?
Precisely; and that's a big reason I would disagree with the OP and say that the method of "do in 2 hours what takes someone else 8 then take the day off" is actually a bad strategy for managing stress.
First; you're gonna become an SME on something. SMEs get Pings. If you're in your "not work" time at 3pm, playing Valorant or whatever, and get a ping; that's going to be annoying. That annoyance isn't justified; its not Right; but that is what you'll feel.
The more important thing is really to set and communicate boundaries. The standard boundary is 9 to 5; so set that, 9am you're on and giving it everything, 5pm you're off and giving it nothing (outside of on-call and whathaveyou, which is a separate problem).
It doesn't matter if you can do in two hours what takes others eight; you can't set a 10 to noon boundary. So; you'd have to lie. And its not just a lie to the company; its a lie to yourself. It'll start with "oh yeah im work from home, I'll still keep slack open and respond to pings but this will be me time". Then that me time turns into personal time, which turns into "yeah I can grab drinks at 2pm on a thursday" time, and it legitimately can spiral.
The weird part for me, and I assume some others is: you can't set boundaries in this environment. Maybe its guilt, I don't know. But if you're only on-on for two hours, then kinda-on for... how long? All day? If the 2pm ping induces the same feeling of annoyance as an 8pm ping would, they're not different; and you may become the person to go to if someone needs help at 8pm. Resentment follows: "I'm out with friends, why are they pinging me this late"; but do you not respond? Do you respond "my working hours are 9 to 5 so expect a response then?" Do you believe that when you say it (that's the ironic part; a part of me would).
> Precisely; and that's a big reason I would disagree with the OP and say that the method of "do in 2 hours what takes someone else 8 then take the day off" is actually a bad strategy for managing stress.
I can see why you would think this, but I have made it work for me. If I put in enough work in two hours to be slightly ahead of colleagues who need the full eight hour day, I don't regard the other six hours as purely "me time". I regard it as standby/on call time. If a ping comes between 0900 and 1700, I'm there to answer it. That's actually part of the strategy. As long as I'm hitting my deadlines, doing a little better than the other guys, putting cover sheets on my TPS reports, and being responsive during working hours none of my eight different bosses know anything's amiss. They get what they want, and I get more time to exercise, read, play my violin, chat with my wife, tinker, etc.
I don't make anybody wait more than 15 minutes unless the only thing they say in chat is "hello"[0], because they're wasting their time and mine.
I don't mentally clock out at 1100 or 1200 and spend the rest of the day playing video games and resenting every ping. I sure as hell don't start drinking at 2pm. Hell, I don't even keep booze in the house; I only drink if I'm at somebody else's house and they offer me a drink. (I'll have one drink for politeness' sake, but that's it.)
> Maybe its guilt, I don't know. But if you're only on-on for two hours, then kinda-on for... how long? All day?
I feel no guilt whatsoever. I've rationalized the guilt away. If getting paid a salary means I get paid the same whether the work takes 40 hours a week or 80, then it ought to mean I get paid the same whether the work takes 10 hours a week or 40 because I think getting paid a salary rather than an hourly wage should imply that I'm being paid for results, not time spent.
The problem, at least in my situation, is that the company has me on a salary but bills their clients by the hour. This obliges them to track "utilization", so being your kind of honest and outright clocking out when I've finished a reasonable amount of work for the day would foul up my metrics. So I've unilaterally imposed a compromise that works for me: I get my work done in the morning, and spend the rest of the workday "on call" and responsive if something comes up. I make a point of participating in company tech/culture groups so that people see I'm not just focused entirely on client work.
I play the game, but I play it my way because playing it their way is playing to lose.
Remember: boss makes a dollar, you make a dime. That's why you shit on the company's time. I might not be a card-carrying IWW[1] member, but I come from a long line of Wobblies.
It seems to be a situation where there are a surfeit of apprentices and a plenitude of journeymen, but a relative dearth of actual masters. I could be wrong, but I'm a journeyman myself -- one who can see mastery glittering on the horizon.
The hard part is when people start treating you like the Smartest Person in the Room (SPITR). Keep hearing that often enough, and you'll start to believe it. You'll lose the growth mindset that had gotten you this far and start thinking that it was your intelligence that made you and not your effort. This will righteously fuck you over when you eventually do foul up, because you won't see it coming even if somebody rubs your nose in the bug you committed because you'll be busy thinking, "I can't have introduced such a bug to the codebase. I'm smart."
I can't tell you how to counter this. I once lost a job after being introduced to a bunch of executives as the SPITR and saying, "If I'm the smartest person in the room, the rest of you are fucked." That's what I get for misreading the room and actually thinking that maybe I was the smartest guy there, smart enough to get away with mocking a bunch of execs capable of spending on Sunday brunch what I pay in monthly rent without a second thought.
It's the same trap that a shitload of kids get shoved into once their teachers figure out that they're reading beyond their grade level and must therefore be GIFTED AND TALENTED. They keep hearing from the adults around them that they're so smart and eventually they start to believe it. How could they not; they're often too young to have figured out that the adults around them are only human and all have pre-paid annual passes on the Dunning-Kruger Express. And when these GIFTED AND TALENTED kids finally fail, it feels like their entire world has come to an end because they've leaned so hard on their "intelligence" that they never learned any other way of dealing with the world around them.
I know this from personal experience. I got labeled as "gifted" in the 1980s because I didn't have the sense to hide my hyperlexia from the adults around me.
Getting back to your concerns: I can't help with the loneliness. I've dealt with the stress by discreetly working less. I can see the other developers' velocity, and rather than outshining them by a substantial margin I pace myself so that my metrics are only slightly better than theirs. Work that takes them a solid eight-hour day only takes me two, so I quietly take the rest of the day for myself.
Rather than rail against the fact that I've become Peter Gibbons and only do eight hours of "real work" per week, I'm learning to take advantage of it.