rockstar developer Otherwise known as the 10x developer, the rockstar developer is part of a mythology used as a labour intensification strategy by some unscrupulous Sillicon Valley sweatshops. There's no actual evidence to support the notion that some developers are innately and universally ten times better than average. Instead, some have more knowledge and/or experience in certain domains of computing and so can grind out code faster if they're already fluent in a specialised domain. Put a "10x" developer onto a task which they have no prior knowledge or experience of and they'll be not much different from average.