[danenania]

The thing is that "celebrity status" is only loosely correlated with engineering ability. Someone who blogs a lot, is involved with a popular product, or is just very social and charismatic can build up a big following and become a celebrity without necessarily being a great coder. Likewise, a lot of amazing engineers are so amazing precisely because they keep their heads in the code and technical concepts all day, and don't spend time on self promotion. Of course, it's possible for someone to become famous purely through the weight of their achievements, but the I think the typical coder-celebrity has had to work pretty hard to become one.

[fecak]

Agreed, just like you can be a celebrity and not have any skills whatsoever in the entertainment or reality TV world. I think their message isn't necessarily about celebrity status but about the quality of work. It says they've done code reviews and reference checks on the 10x site, so they are saying that they've vetted the talent. My guess is that the types of people represented are probably not what one would consider celebrities, as many can afford their own support staff (assistant, scheduler, accountant, etc.).

As an aside, there is some value to hiring celebrity status folks, regardless of their coding ability (helps with recruiting, name recognition, company status, etc.).