What distinguishes the best software engineers?

This distinguishes the best : 1. Works at a company not only on tickets but collabs with other teams/devs/PMs to understand what really could improve the product, build out tools to increase productivity, talk to community of liked minded people outside the company also , make others aware of awesome tech out there, give presentation and finally ability to take responsibility if something goes bad within the team. 2. Does not work at a company, but freelances yet follows all the points in 1.

.. doesn't use big frameworks and do everything rather manually and with cost savvy thinking. Of course, knows how to use Google, too.

Focus on the big picture - what are we actually trying to achieve.