to be clear, when a recruiter, manager, or ceo says someone is a "genius programmer" or "10x" or similar

they mean "someone who works 80 hour weeks and we only pay them for 40"

every time

@tef not necessarily so. Some people at some periods in their lives can be extraordinarily productive in software.

I say this not as a recruiter but as someone who has built a lot of software in a lot of teams over the decades, and observed some exceptionally productive colleagues.

Often, they burn out, but not always.

Software is a very odd profession. In many ways it really is more like magic than like engineering.