I think "10x" is just bad shorthand. If you want to talk about it from a financial perspective, talk about the rate of return. Can one developer do ten times

I think "10x" is just bad shorthand. If you want to talk about it from a financial perspective, talk about the rate of return. Can one developer do ten times the work any other developer does during a week? Probably not. Can one developer have a rate of return such that they get ten times more valuable work done? Almost certainly. So developer A delivers 3% improvement per year and developer B delivers 6% improvement per year. Across a career, if you start with 100 units, developer A delivers 245 units at the end, and developer B delivers 2008 units.