It seems like asking this question without ever nailing down what the author means by "worth" is inviting fuzzy thinking. There are plenty of definitions of "worth" whereby a single programmer may be worth 3.5 million, though it is certainly a tall bar to leap. A programmer who is one of a small set of programmers on a project that will make the company many, many millions and whose leaving will at the very least cause an inevitable and significant delay in the rollout may indeed be in a position to negotiate such a payout, but it's an awfully narrow set of circumstances. (Even somebody twice as genius as the first guy will require spin-up time.)

(Everyone's replaceable, but not equally, and not necessarily quickly.)