Is high performance making economically valuable contributions? If so, there is huge inherent inequality between the economic value of projects, so the metric is worthless for judging engineering talent.
Is high performance getting good performance reviews? In my experience performance reviews are wrought with favoritism, ageism, and probably other subjectivities that create a very low signal to noise ratio, so that metric is worthless.
Is high performance someone who is good at writing software? There are engineers I know who write very good software but lack the decision making or vision to do so in valuable areas. Thus, another metric is worthless.
The reality is there is no general “high performance”. There are smarter and more motivated people, sure. I think testing for general intelligence, personality type, etc., are valuable. But I also think a lot of high performance is about finding someone who is a good fit for the organization in terms of the individual’s experience and skills and the organization’s needs.