Talk about "10X performers" reminds me of the saying "It’s a marathon, not a race." Most people recognize Usain Bolt, but how many people have heard of Eliud Kipchoge?
In our field, the "Usains"—the flashy 10X performers—are hailed as heroes. If you are a "Kipchoge", quietly focusing on a sustainable career, you will probably fly under the radar.
Its not like they are going to get paid 10x more for over achieving. There is nothing flashy to this. Instead they will be reassigned to other people's problems on top of their own work. So, its best to just keep it to themselves and over achieve as necessary to do less work, because they will get paid the same either way.
Rather "it's a crawl, not a marathon".
Also, I think the most value a programmer provide is as a maintainer.
I blame feature factories led by agile clergy for the perceived drop in commercial software quality in the last 10-15 years. There is no place for maintainance.
This is a weird take. The most basic principle of agile is that you start with a tiny kernel of software that does something useful, and then iterate on it. In effect, all agile software development is maintenance.