In the interests of context and actual references regarding the 10x thing, I have  canned response that I churn out:<p>The 10x programmers thing; from a 2nd edition of Peopleware, the 10x programmer is not a myth, but it’s comparing your best to your worst – NOT best to median (it’s also not about programming specifically; it’s simply a common distribution in many metrics of performance).<p>The rule of thumb Peopleware states is that you can rely on the best outperforming the worst by a factor of 10, and you can rely on your best outperforming your median by a factor of 2.5 (this of course indicates that if you are that median developer, middle of the pack, you’re already a 4x developer under this numbering scheme).<p>Obviously, this is a statistical rule, and if you’ve got a tiny sample size or some kind of singular outlier or other such; well, we’re all adults and we understand how statistics and distributions work.<p>Peopleware uses Boehn (1981), Sackman (1968), Augustine (1979) and Lawrence (1981) as its sources.<p>[ “Peopleware”, DeMarco and Lister, 1987, p45 ]