"There's no upper bound on what a brilliant engineers can do, I've known people that you could not replace with 1000 mediocre engineers working for 10 years and they would't produce the same innovation, creativity and automation."
You say that, but is your brilliant programmer going to produce the same output at each of Microsoft, Google, or Xerox?
It is a matter of how you use them like anything. If you do your attribuitation wrong you will get nonsense anything.
If you have a 10,000 horsepower engine pumping water into a very hot large sieve vs a 1 horse power one into a sealed container the 1 Horsepower one and then judge the engines by the water gathered at the end.
You say that, but is your brilliant programmer going to produce the same output at each of Microsoft, Google, or Xerox?