It really depends on the project no.

For a lot of stuff, one guy who knows what he is doing is worth infinitely more than any number of engineers, because this job is mostly about knowledge, not labor hours.

Even in a regular enterprise web application, one guy whose just more skilled in architecting solutions is insanely valuable. You dont need a bunch of engineers writing a bunch of inconsistent/unthought out apis and architecture, you need one guy to lead it

In every project I have worked in big and small - a key person took charge. Others contributed, but that individual made it happen.

so in every key project you've worked on, a one single person took care of the coding from DevOps to frontend/backend, deployment, testing, and all other coding required beyond "key functionality"?

I think it says more about the size of the project and the complexity of the task that you've worked on, rather than "10x engineer vs normal engineer". Not even at a 10 person startup have I seen "one" person done everything. Unless you're talking about someone just forking OSS and gluing it together, to make a carbon-copy application of something that already exist(for free) then sure.

Edit: >key person took charge and made it happen

person - singular.

made it happen - it's hard to call an engine a car. to make something happen, you need all the component (contributions).

> one single person took care of the coding from DevOps to frontend/backend, deployment, testing, and all other coding required beyond "key functionality"?

I didn’t say that. Read it again.

It’s not even the same person every time, people trade off being that key person.

> I think it says more about the size of the project and the complexity of the task

You have no idea. Please address the ideas rather than making personal assumptions.

Humans tend to have pyramidal power structures, because of [reasons]. I don't see how this relates to the topic?

> It’s not even the same person every time, people trade off being that key person.

So it's the role that delivers software? I think I agree with that. Even so, that role cannot function without its support system (the team).

Not needing something is different than not benefiting from something.

No, I’m optimizing for making customers happy. I dgaf about your ability to leetcode. I strongly care about the rate and quality of the things you ship to prod. This is what a 10x engineer does 10x of.