I'm kind of an outlier, but I really believe that context places a huge, huge part in the "superstar developer" mythos. We're very quick to overlook a lot of co

I'm kind of an outlier, but I really believe that context places a huge, huge part in the "superstar developer" mythos. We're very quick to overlook a lot of contributing factors in the rush to declare some developers legendary. "Outliers" does a pretty good job outlining the argument, which I happen to agree with. This isn't to say that you can plop anyone in the right context and get a "superstar", and I think some people are more resilient to contextual changes that might make other devs crumble. "If you were launching a technology or developing a product, would you rather have five great engineers rather than 1,000 average engineers?" I also think that this is a straw-man argument, in the sense that the kind of person who can work well on a 1,000 person team may be different than the five great engineers who can develop and bootstrap a new product. There is overlap, but honestly I think there's an argument that some situations call for "1,000 solid engineers".