10 times programmers don't exist. Maybe a 2 or a 3 time engineer at most. That doesn't take away from your valuable contributions to the projects you have worked on. However, as you describe, you get brought in to solve a specific problem. You don't have to worry about compliance training, town halls, sucking up to managers and the other endless time sinks you have as a permanent employee.
The reason ten times programmers don't exist, as programming is hardly ever just about spitting out lines of code. More often than not you have to spend time clarifying fuzzy requirements, getting cross team alignment on requirements or spend significant time on getting your code peee reviewed and build on less than efficient CI/CD systems.
The myth of the ten times engineers is propagated by management. Senior management love to claim they hire the top 5% of the market, something that is statistically impossible.
Maybe not, but I _can_ say that for me the problems I unstuck for customers _were_ about programming, not requirements gathering or process.
It usually was some small kernel of a larger codebase that was ill thought out (usually under-engineered, or solved with a naive approach that wouldn't scale/perform) and hadn't been thought out right.
The solution usually involved recasting the entire approach and solving it some other way.
You are right that I didn't have to deal with town halls, or scrums or any of that, and that was definitely part of the upside.
But what I _did_ have to deal with as a 'fixer' was that I never know what specific skills would be required at this particular customer site. It required thinking on your feet and was frankly exhilarating to pull of.
The reason ten times programmers don't exist, as programming is hardly ever just about spitting out lines of code. More often than not you have to spend time clarifying fuzzy requirements, getting cross team alignment on requirements or spend significant time on getting your code peee reviewed and build on less than efficient CI/CD systems.
The myth of the ten times engineers is propagated by management. Senior management love to claim they hire the top 5% of the market, something that is statistically impossible.