"I can tell you of a few engineers currently working on technical problems that offer zero promise to add any business value to their companies, just for the sake of the technical problem being interesting and challenging, the engineer being too inexperienced or not value-driven enough to realize why it’s misguided, and their leadership being too little technical to understand that this work should probably be reprioritized."

I think the author works on my team.

Since starting my current gig I've built several functioning prototypes at work that have business value. After about 1.5 years I was given lead on a project that just shipped to production, which serves a business need. I don't really consider myself a 10x programmer, but I create useful stuff.

The lead developer on our team has been spinning wheels on a project whose result is supposed to be useful. The problem is he doesn't have the proper technical knowledge, and our manager is even less technically inclined than him. He simply smiles and nods whenever the lead spews jargon at him. This project has been going on several years without tangible results. It blows my mind.

My issue isn't that his project is useless, it's that our manager strongly urges me to follow his advice. I can't follow the advice of any engineer, lead or otherwise, whom I've never seen ship a system. Period. So I just do what any good engineer does - whatever I think is best for the company.

Edit: The sad part is I'm only working 20 hours a week on average. When I work from home I do take naps right after lunch; usually for about 2 hours. I could actually take on a second job and still be sane. It's quite dumbfounding to see what passes for "productivity" in corporate America.