The 10x developer is not a myth (2013)
I had a boss 25 years ago (smart guy, did compiler work, etc. for new computer architectures) who claimed that there was really a 100x factor difference from the best to the worse. I believe this: would you rather have one day of work from Daphne Koller, Peter Norvig, or Jeff Dean - or 100 days from an average developer? Well, the answer is that "it depends." There is a ton of work that can be effectively done by non-rock stars, and there is some work where a 100x person can do things that other people can't, no matter how much time they spend.<p>An example: I use TensorFlow, but looking at the concept and implementation, I don't think I could conceive of and write TensorFlow in 10 years of work.