"There are no 10x developers, only developers who have so much experience with a task that they do it 10x quicker".

I'd suggest virtually the opposite: a good way to be an outlier is to have reasonably broad knowledge plus being good at learning new stuff, such that when faced with a new problem you can quickly bring the right set of skills/technologies/whatever at it.

I think "10x" is just bad shorthand.

If you want to talk about it from a financial perspective, talk about the rate of return.

Can one developer do ten times the work any other developer does during a week? Probably not.

Can one developer have a rate of return such that they get ten times more valuable work done? Almost certainly.

So developer A delivers 3% improvement per year and developer B delivers 6% improvement per year. Across a career, if you start with 100 units, developer A delivers 245 units at the end, and developer B delivers 2008 units.

That is less a factor of the person and more of the environment tho'.

I think I'm 10x in some tasks and 0.1x in others, not sure about everyone else...

I think probably most of us are but the 10x guy is someone who believes themselves to be 10x across the board

I have met and worked with a few people that fall under the 10x banner. Incredibly clever people who kept their intelligence in check with pragmatic solutions.

Some tough problems that took other skilled developers months they could solve in a couple of days and they could consistently do it across the tech and domain sphere.

I think the issue is people claim to be 10x, if you're claiming to be 10x then most likely you are not, the 10xers I've met have all been very humble.