Environment and culture certainly play a big role in developer productivity. You can do a lot with average. That being said in any kind of large organisation c

Environment and culture certainly play a big role in developer productivity. You can do a lot with average. That being said in any kind of large organisation changing the culture is 100x harder and slower than hiring better developers. IMO, building/creating 10x programmers in your area of business is simple but it is not easy. - Ensure at least 25% of your developers times are spent on learning and development. - Give them the freedom to work on what they think are the most important tasks to the business (e.g. Something similar to open allocation) - Ensure you are paying your developers at least market+20% in order to minimise turnover so you actually get something out of creating 10x'ers. Now go and try and change a large organisations culture to be like the above. I'll wait.... And wait... And wait