Saying these people don’t exist is absurd

Ya i think this comment nails what i consider to be a 10x programmer. They aren't people who solve things quickly. They are people that solve things quickly and also enable their team to solve things quickly. They feel a need to not only be efficient themselves but enhance the efficiency of their teammates through mentorship, teaching and team awareness/empathy.

10x programmers are like living reference books They Know Their Shit. They won't remember details necessarily off their head but they don't need to look up notes. When you talk to them, it's like they just pulled up the Complete Lego Block Reference in their head and are snapping the pieces together. They can't tell you the exact size of a piece but they have a hunch that some piece A probably exists that probably snaps to a B piece to deliver what you need.

The 10x programmer doesn't exist. Yes, an experienced programmer can complete a well defined coding exercise, in their field of expertise, ten or more times faster than other programmers. There is research to back up this claim. However, in the real world software engineering is hardly ever just about programming. As a permanent employee there is a lot of time sink in attending meetings, town halls, compliance training, performance reviews and just generally sucking up to management to ensure you get the promotion you want. "Ten times programmers" often heavily rely on their team to be able to be this efficient. The worst ones rely on their team to fix their hacky codebase as they move on to a new project.

I think there are even people who are 10X as fast as others at solving well-defined programming problems, aka grunt work. Those who sit down and grind through it with a highly optimized workflow and don't take many breaks.

Yup. Concur almost entirely. It’s superb abilities in complexity management. Which is what real software engineering is all about. Like management or raising kids, everyone think they can do it. Very few can do it really well.