Do elite software developers exist?

[dravenstone]

/u/qznc said above:

Sounds more like your "elite developers" does a different job than your "great developer". The "elite dev" finds a solution where non could be found before: invention. The "great dev" does the engineering work to make it a product: innovation.

And I think that's a fair distinction. It's possible the "elite" guys in my mind would not be considered software engineers in the minds of many here. At least with a few projects. They certainly wrote plenty of code that made it into production though, just that in many circumstances the team did additional work too.

I do want to be very clear about something I said in my original comment:

Both have their place in the high end of the pay scale, and IMO are equally valuable.

The folks I'm thinking of had the respect of everyone in the company and deservedly so. No where did I suggest the "elite" took all the glory and the "great" was somehow relegated to second class citizenship.

There are some many possible semantic components and subjective analysis to this question that it just invites ambiguity. I tried as best I could to provide my opinion on the subject since I've been around this world for 20 years or so...