I'd in no way claim I'm a 10x developer. Hell I question whether I am a 1x developer, but it's not really as simple as that. First of all the notion that 10x

I'd in no way claim I'm a 10x developer. Hell I question whether I am a 1x developer, but it's not really as simple as that. First of all the notion that 10x doesn't exist is sorta crap. This may come across as pretty shocking but I don't dedicate every waking moment to development. There is an expectation from many people that being a developer is a 24/7 job and a lot of kids buy into that. If someone spends 10x the effort of me because they honestly feel their career is more important than the rest of their life, then I wouldn't be suprised if they were considerably more productive. I like to think effort correlates to intelligence and skill but I guess it isn't that simple either. Many people learn certian things, while I choose to focus on others. In the end we may emerge somewhere in the middle but everyone has their strengths and weaknesses. Thus whether you're 10x more productive than me depends on the domain of knowledge which we're utilising. Folks judge productivity differently. Sadly this often comes from a managment perspective which relates directly to the speed the thing they wanted first appears to them as usable. That's fairly logical from their point of view, but we all know it's folly. Personally I live in a world of duracell bunnies coding up a mess without any thought of security of maintainability. More often than not management tend to believe they're more productive but in reality they just make everyones life harder in the long run. Finally it comes down to motivation. I'm working a crud app for day rates, I'm in no rush. That's not to say I draw it out longer than it should take but I work my hours at a reasonable pace then I go home. Give me an interesting problem and maybe a vested interesting in completing it and I'll work harder and work on it at home. Suddenly I may be that 10x developer you were talking about afterall, though I'm probably not going to spend my entire life like that. Personally I think it's pretty silly to propagate the myth that people are useless if they aren't as quick as others. Sure the scale is huge, but the real problem is people aren't rewarded based on their value but based on crappy metrics like "market rates". Next up is even if management were willing to reward based on value, it's actually very difficult for them to do in the vast majority of cases.