To make this a bit more subtle, I consider 10x to be contextual. Some developers will legitimately be 10x in some circumstances but not others. The kind of pr

To make this a bit more subtle, I consider 10x to be contextual. Some developers will legitimately be 10x in some circumstances but not others. The kind of prima donna you are talking about (assuming they are truly brilliant and not just a Dunning-Kruger case) can probably only be 10x on small solo projects. But there are definitely those programmers who are 10x or even 100x by being a combination of brilliant plus collaboration-minded. The thing about programming is that it is a relatively easy form of automation of data processing, so whereas a single developer can have multiples of impact far greater than a traditional office worker, and sometimes even greater than the impact of a traditional office manager (because software is more scalable than people), you can get a multiplicative effect when you combine great programming with great programmer management and collaboration. This is where you'll find a lot of my programming heroes. For example, what Yehuda Katz did with Bundler in terms of gathering community input and hammering something into shape to solve a whole host of hairy problems with RubyGems which no single individual could completely grok is inspiring. The amount of impact a project like that has on the productivity of thousands is impossible to quantify. I guess Linus Torvalds would be the quintessential example of that, for his ability to channel the efforts of thousands of developers in a cohesive direction while maintaining an impressive standard of quality. So being 10x, 100x, 1000x is possible, but it depends on working on the right problems with the right people.