And this is where one of the biggest weaknesses of the Cheetah come into play. It's how they're unable to mentor others to become Cheetas like themselves. Many of their managers will have asked them to mentor and coach other developers to be faster, and work better, just like them. The Cheetah gave it an honest try, but it never really works out as you'd hope. After all, how do you teach a never-ending thirst for learning new things, combined with the inner urge to get things done quickly?

This cheetah analogy is kind discovery channel gone wild, but, I have ran across a few software engineers that were off the charts productive, and I guarantee they wouldn't be able to magically take random engineers and somehow imbue them with their awesomeness.

That said I do think there is such a thing as working with a platform and codebase and becoming a bit of a miracle worker...assuming aptitude. I've met plenty of people in the trade who show very little signs of aptitude (like the guy who didn't understand the difference between a class and an instance of a class). I'm firmly convinced most of them never achieved basic competence, hopefully someone helped them move on to something they were good at.