I believe that 10x developer is real, but it's not that a particular person is 10x faster/better than another, it's more that in the right circumstances, when i

I believe that 10x developer is real, but it's not that a particular person is 10x faster/better than another, it's more that in the right circumstances, when intrinsic motivation, a clear vision, having the right tools for the job and knowing them well, understanding the problem space, having the right fit with methodology and scale, etc.. -- when everything lines up anyone will be 10x as productive as other people who aren't as well aligned. The cases where I've seen (or been) the 10x person have always been because I've been operating with different assumptions and approaches, or using different tools that were a better fit for the problem. If your development feels 10x slower than it could be, go back and look at where the time is going. I guarantee it won't be actually going to development. A simple example, maybe people are spending 9x writing useless tests and integrations or writing abstract code for things that will only ever be one concrete implementation in the real world. Yet in a different context coders could be spending 9x of their time firefighting and fixing releases because you don't have enough automated testing, or spending time hacking up a monolithic uberclass because it wasn't abstracted enough. It's not that one of those is right and the other is wrong, it's that one is a much better fit for the situation. Similar with motivation (are people excited to solve the problem?), with having a clear idea of what you're building, etc. Every one of those is a multiplier. It can be a 1.5x or a 0.8x. You stack those up, and a 1.2x motivation * 1.3x "fast deploy mindset" * 2.0x clear vision = 3x, but 0.8x low motivation * 0.7x write a bunch of useless boilerplate * 0.9x "we're all building different things" rapidly turns into a 0.4x productivity.