[perl4ever]

If you know which algorithm to use or how to find one, then you can accomplish things with even greater multipliers. But empirically, people with many years of experience that have seen everything aren't valued so maybe it just isn't that valuable.

Maybe coordination problems just drown out individual productivity most of the time. Or, looking at it another way, if someone senior (as an IC) hasn't found their way into a position where they have leverage ("impact") already, then they don't have the only (meta-) skill that matters.

But then again, when you won't pay people enough to retain them and "Leslie" happens to be the most productive and abhor interviewing, then maybe you end up with literally one person replacing ten.