That is similar to programming: even if you have everything clear in your head, you know how to do every single thing that is written in the requirements of the program, you still have to type it out.
A lot of time I thought, well this is fairly easy, and then spent I month just typing out code.
The only situation where really a more experienced programmer can be more or less 10 times faster than a non experienced one is in debugging/troubleshooting problems, because with more experience he tends to know by experience where it's most likely that the problem is and thus test in that direction.
It's not about writing a regular boring CRUD app that no one cares about as fast as 10 regular developers. It's about choosing the right problems to solve on their own initiative, building the foundation of a technology organization that can sustainably & quickly grow in scope and users, being the first to solve a problem no one else has understood such that the organization crushes their competition and so on.
Leading the development of web software that scales to 100 million users in 2003. Planning novel computer vision algorithms to a vehicle fleet of millions of vehicles, running on custom hardware they've also made contributions towards. Realizing that consumer VR headsets are now _just barely possible_ if you do everything right, and bringing it to market. Etc.
This is the difference between a small organization being capable of solving a difficult business problem and achieving profitability, and not.
Bad analogies aside, as others already pointed out, the biggest gain is usually on more creative and architectural tasks with amplified impact, where the requirements given are not as clear as code. Not how fast you change a bolt or type 100LOC. Instead, for example choosing the right tools instead of reinventing your own, or writing a composable interface that enables integration with other tools instead of of an unmaintainable spaghetti monstrosity.
The impact that creating something new can have can range from changing the course of history, to literally nothing (like most everything I've written).
Programmers and mechanics have a vastly different impact potential than one another.
No: One developer probably cannot _type_ x10 as fast as another. But they might be able to write code that can cure cancer -- while you/I can only regurgitate the same CRUD app over and over.
Experience and the skill to remember or recall well, help a lot with engineering.
But I would switch this around and definitely say with my few years of experience, those that were “the best” were also those that were interested the most in their tools of the trade.
And whether that is a mechanical keyboard or a better screen or better performance or better IDE setups. Doesn’t really matter. Sadly many companies don’t seem to encourage this enough imho
