There are environment factors that contribute, not 10x but maybe the 3x mentioned in the article. That makes bad developers work like the average ones and the average as top developers in terms of productivity, to make the parallel with the article. The one thing the environment will not replace is skill: a top developer is also doing the right decisions in terms of design and architecture of the code, an average one will not know how to do that and a bad one will be clueless about the topic.
a top developer is also doing the right decisions in terms of design and architecture of the code
All the top developers I've worked with have been happy to make decisions because they know it's OK to get it wrong. You can change things later. Having the time, resources and authority to make big changes is largely an environmental issue.
I would question the confidence of any developer who claims they make the right call every time. No one does.
