I disagree, the few really high-performers that I have worked with were high-performers already from the first week with a new technology, from the first month in their first job, and already as a student during practical work they were more productive than most people who had many years of challenging work behind them.
Experience is important and adds up, honing the skills makes everyone better, but it's orthogonal to this issue; there are people that will very quickly outperform someone who has honed their skills for years, and once they have honed their skills in that domain they might perhaps start outperforming them by the mythical 10x ratio.
I guess it depends on how one defines 10x or "high performer". Prodigies and maestro's will always be few and far in-between, is that what is meant by 10x? I don't know. But given the relative abundance of 10x'ers anecdotes in discussions in places like HN, I always just take that term to mean "really good" or perhaps just fuzzy romanticizing-- and not literally able to do the work of 10x "mortals".
Experience is important and adds up, honing the skills makes everyone better, but it's orthogonal to this issue; there are people that will very quickly outperform someone who has honed their skills for years, and once they have honed their skills in that domain they might perhaps start outperforming them by the mythical 10x ratio.