This. Folks can agree that there's 10x in everything. Banksy is 20x artist. Tony Hawk is 20x skateboarder. Yo-yo Ma is 20x Cellist. We can find exceptiona

This. Folks can agree that there's 10x in everything. Banksy is 20x artist. Tony Hawk is 20x skateboarder. Yo-yo Ma is 20x Cellist. We can find exceptional folks in every field, and then there are folks who are really 10x. Everyone knows easily the 20x in computing. We can easily recognize Donald Knuth, Peter Norvig, etc as 10x+ computer scientist.. Don't think that folks will also argue that Jeff Dean, Fabrice Bellard, John Carmack, Linus, Dennis Ritchie, Jamie Zawinksi, Brian Kernighan, Ken Thompson, Bill Joy, Donald Knuth, Dan Berstein, Brad Fitzpatrick, Doug Cutting, Rob Pike, Joe Armstrong are 20x programmers. Yet 10x and most people get upset, and you're very correct because they haven't met those. I have met one, and it wasn't about pay, they worked in an average non tech city, they got paid average salary. They loved the work tho, and cranked out almost as much work as everyone else in a department of around 15 folks.