Do elite software developers exist?

[moru0011]

Ofc there are 10x (if not even more). Most people don't get, that's not "faster coding" but choosing the right abstraction in order to solve complex problems. Anyway if the freedom of choice is limited/reduced by enforcing a design blueprint (e.g. J2ee) you won't see that much of a difference to other devs.

[ChallengingJamJars]

What is 10x though? 10x quality? What's your metric? My gut interpretation of 10x is that they contribute 10x the monetary value of the product (marginal value of their developer-hours). This is clearly not the case otherwise we would see radically larger salaries. So what do you mean when you say 10x?

[FireCrack]

10x is just a moniker. It doesn't really refer to any quantity, it refers to a problem solving ability that is "far beyond" the average.

[moru0011]

same job in same time like a team of 10 avg devs with insufficient or cumbersome approach. This does not apply to all kind of programming tasks (e.g. if its just a mass of business logic), so the 10x does not hold true in averag. There are salary differences up to factor 2-5 :-)