I don't know what the term "rock star developers" actually mean, but there are definitely people I would call short term and long term developers.<p>The progress of a short term developers work, looks extremely fast, but its logarithmic. A lot of bad project managers think he does an insane amount, maybe 10x, maybe 100x levels of work. He writes code so fast and cranks out so many features its no wonder he's a rockstar. After a while though, because everything he builds is built for the moment, its just nothing but mazes full of bugs that frighten even the nerdiest dungeon crawling hacker.<p>The progress of having a long term developer on a team, on the other hand, starts off slow, but it's exponential. He might need weeks or months to build up a good foundation. He spends time writing small things that show little to no benefit, but are built well and from which other things can be built on top of. Everything he builds can be used by anyone who reads it, so they too can use his work. His work multiplies the work of his own as well as the rest of the team. But the bad project manager sees him and thinks he's too slow to complete tickets. He is a .05x developer at this point because the average developer would have been finished with two features by now.<p>After weeks, maybe months, however, his progress matches those of the average developer. In time progress is so quick, it makes the short term developer's work, which is starting to plateau, look effectively flat. While the short term developer was spending his time building up walls with his hammer, nails, and duct tape, the long term developer was there making a drill, that was used in making a saw, that was used in making a ladder, that was used in making a crane. Now he's making skyscrapers using the tools he built, something the short term will never even be able to do in a single lifetime.