[francisl]

because the 15x programmer that is slowed down to 1.3x because the 50x added 80x of technical debt will leave the company. So the company will only have 50x that leave as soon as there is a need to fix their own code.

To put a real value on the work of a heterogeneous pool of developers is way harder than it looks. One will only value the contribution of what 'he/she' values as important. But the quality of a software come from the strength of many that focus on different things. Even the person who is not really good, but is the only one that bring a 'team spirit/team work' brings value to a team.