It's mostly raw passion. You can't get a 9-to-5 worker excited enough to learn something from scratch over a weekend just to do something she thinks is "cool".

There's also a difference between a better programmer vs more productive. I will never be as productive as the two that I mentioned, but I'm pretty good at programming. I have enough experience to know how to develop a feature and a set of code such that it's easy to read, easy to maintain and doesn't have very many bugs. That's just something I've learned over time. Others may be much more productive than me, but I rarely have to revisit features due to bugs. So there are different measures based on what you want from a team.

> better programmer vs more productive

That's a good point. Honestly, I would prefer a team of developers that are like you vs. outliers that are by definition hard to find and maybe even more difficult to manage. You sound above-average w.r.t your work ethic which is also hard to find and even more important for a strong development team.

> You can't get a 9-to-5 worker excited enough

Would love to know how to achieve that. I use psychological knowledge in my leadership and may have found a way to give people a way to show their full potential. But I'll make further tests before I write about it. Maybe you already have some well-tested tips - I found this infographic and liked it [1].

[1]: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/10-proven-ways-to-build-tru...

Let me simplify it for you: pay them.

A 50k developer in 1980 should be making 260k today if they just following the growth of the economy.

I'd say it's a combination of raw intelligence, passion and ability to see a vision of how things ought to be and bring it into being.

The people that stand out to me aren't necessarily the ones who do what they're told. It's the ones who do what's effective.