Which is hardly as intimidating. If the 10x meme hadn't mutated into a mythical ten times the average developer, it wouldn't be worthy of generating so much clickbait. We'd also be able to hire sanely without freaking out about accidentally recruiting someone normal.
+1 on the hiring sanely. A big part of the hype about the 10x programmer is that you don't pay 10x the salary: you get 10x the programmer for 2x the salary. But if they're only 2.5x programmers, that disconnect disappears.
Antirez's points about design are very relevant. Hiring a 10x CTO is probably very possible. But a 10x CTO can easily cost you 10x in salary, so again no disconnect.
