The original study (if I remember correctly) showed a 10x productivity difference between the most and least productive students on a given task. I find that ve

The original study (if I remember correctly) showed a 10x productivity difference between the most and least productive students on a given task. I find that very plausible. In real world settings the difference might be much larger, since some developers effectively have zero or negative productivity. This article talks about a developer with consistently 10x productivity compared to the average developers in an organization. I think this is pretty rare. And I would consider it a warning signal. It means that either the average is really low or the hero is really a one-of-kind genius which will likely move on to a different job quickly (or get hit by a bus, per Murphys Law). It could also indicate (as per the article) that the 10x developer is actually keeping the other developers down, e.g. by insufficient knowledge sharing or writing unmaintainable code. You often see this if the 10x developers is "the old guy" who develops at night and hates meetings of any kind. Removing this guy will cause an immediate hit, but over time increase the productivity of the remaining developers.