The Myth of the Myth of the 10x Programmer
The concept of the 10x programmer seems to have been drifted from its original meaning.  It isn't that there's a coder that is 10x better than a <i>good</i> coder.  It is that a lot of people are really bad at their jobs, and a coder that thinks and learns about problems can be far better than those people.  It comes from terrible "corporate drone" software developers in the 80s and 90s - the ones that would takes weeks to developer simple routines.  Bring in someone that loves software dev, and they appear magical.<p>Today, with Google and Stack Overflow, that gap has diminished, but there is definitely people still way better than "average" developers.  However, if you have someone that keeps their skills sharp and their problem solving desire sharper, you won't fine anyone 10x - maybe 2 or 3x, at best.