While I completely agree that some programmers can be 10x more productive than other ones, I think it's far more common to see programmers who LOOK 10x more productive than others. It's very hard to compare people who have different problems to solve. Solving 90% of the problem is not the same as solving 100% of the problem, and sometimes that 10% really is worth the effort.
I've seen cases where one ostensibly 10x developer comes in and solves 90% (the easy parts) of a problem. Management love him. Then he moves on to other projects and leaves a team of "1x developers" to deal with the 10% (which management still insist on having). This team now have to re-write everything this superstar did from the ground up without taking shortcuts this time. The time it takes makes them all look like 0.1x developers.
"I came, things got better, I left, things got worse. What do you think that says about me?"
Whether it's an engineer, or a manager, or C-level executive, this is very easy to achieve by borrowing from the future. Very difficult to solve I think.
I've seen cases where one ostensibly 10x developer comes in and solves 90% (the easy parts) of a problem. Management love him. Then he moves on to other projects and leaves a team of "1x developers" to deal with the 10% (which management still insist on having). This team now have to re-write everything this superstar did from the ground up without taking shortcuts this time. The time it takes makes them all look like 0.1x developers.