It's a self-serving mythology, because a few individuals can claim to be 10Xers to gain special privileges. Do people say "I'm a 10x programmer" and get promot

It's a self-serving mythology, because a few individuals can claim to be 10Xers to gain special privileges. Do people say "I'm a 10x programmer" and get promoted or some sort of perk? Get better jobs by saying that you're a rock star? Of course not. The premise of 10x programmers, outside of bloviating bloggers, is primarily one that people observe in programming teams. The "go to" person, the person who invariably initiates all of the important shifts and base designs, etc. Many projects start around such a person, they leave and it slowly rusts under a team of normal competency developers, who eventually all disperse and join another project started by a standout developer. My experience in this industry is that there are absolutely extreme exception developers, and thinking back I'd say it was about 1 out of every 100 developers in most orgs. They were the people who didn't need to be hand held, used heuristics to find solutions, developed designs that invariably became the kernel of solutions, etc. Other developers were critical in the mix, but the notion that all are the same is destructive and unrealistic.