The hinge of this analysis is on the word "outperformed". Performance of what you're measuring exactly? If our sole performance criteria was churning out LOC an

The hinge of this analysis is on the word "outperformed". Performance of what you're measuring exactly? If our sole performance criteria was churning out LOC and subsisting on adderall, any new grad can kick ass. But you wouldn't entrust them multi-million-dollar man-hours of headcount to a steer multi-quarter project to actually work and bring in money. Without such steering, any code is mere dead matter, for which the performance of making is irrelevant.