I would agree with you on this if you were to state that someone looked at the code created by one of these ultra-productive developers, asked questions, and wa

I would agree with you on this if you were to state that someone looked at the code created by one of these ultra-productive developers, asked questions, and was told "f* off". But, did any of the other developers even look at what the other ultra-productive developer did ? Did it get studied in detail, and were questions asked of the ultra-productive developer ? I've been the ultra-productive developer in such a situation before. After a couple of runs of "hey, here's some cool things that I did that I thought you might be interested in" followed by a lot of glazed-over looks and shifting in seats, I got the message and stopped doing them. There simply was not any interest, and I learned a valuable lesson: most developers don't have any where near the same level of interest in the craft as those that have done it for 25-30 years and are passionate about it. It's just the way it is, and no amount of persuasion or pleading is going to change it. Either that, or I'm mind-numbingly boring and that was the reason... ;-)