A single good programmer does the job of 5, and you can pay her 2x. That's not magic, it's just a very refined skill set, focus and no communication barrier of

A single good programmer does the job of 5, and you can pay her 2x. That's not magic, it's just a very refined skill set, focus and no communication barrier of multiple people. So depending on the project, small team can be replaced by a single good programmer, or the project is just too large and you need many many people and communication infrastructure. The "rockstar" connotation is just SEO.