In my 20 years of industry at both small and large tech companies, I couldn't disagree more with you. I'd also appreciate if you toned down the insults.
It should not be an insult to be told that there are people more skilled than you, though. It is hubris to think otherwise.
Are you saying in 20 years, you haven't met any engineers that were head and shoulders noticeably more productive than their peers, in terms of code volume+quality?
There are undoubtedly developers who are 10x more productive. But I doubt its because they are born smarter. There are developers who are 100x more invested in their work, and only 10x more productive.
How can developers be "100x more invested in their work"? Assuming the average lazy developer spent 2 years in college learning their craft and 20 hours a week actually working, you're saying the 100x-invested programmer spent 200 years learning about software and 2000 hours a week working?
That's an insane claim. How far must people go to be politically correct and to avoid "insulting"(?!) the average person?
Sure, I don't know if they were "born" smarter. At least one of these people, I got to witness up-close his methodological approach to all his coding work. I don't know if the rest had a specific technique or not. All I know: these guys were all insanely fast, and only very rarely made any coding errors.
I guess I don't see the hero worship. Mention "10x Engineer" around here and people become furious.
Unreachably superior? Well, I'll never be as good as these guys I'm thinking of, and probably not even if I doubled down on sharpening my craft. There's lots of factors for that. Maybe they picked up better habits early, maybe I need to drop dumb hobbies. Or maybe, they're just clearer thinkers. Who knows, but I'm OK with it.
