This completely misses the point. Nobody is denying that they exist; it's that they are completely irrelevant to software engineering because software engineeri

This completely misses the point. Nobody is denying that they exist; it's that they are completely irrelevant to software engineering because software engineering is delivering consistent (not necessarily "outstanding" or "very good") results with the fat part of the bell curve. Yes, you can deliver a project with the right person with 100th of the effort, but this is not repeatable (the person will move on or very likely work as singleton contractor). If you get a 10x developer at the rate of the 1x developer and can convince him to stay at this pay grade, then we would be having an actual topic to discuss.