Vast difference in 'productivity' are stock-in-trade in discussions amongst programmers - the story goes that some workers are vastly more productive (as in producing more working code) than others. The same might be the case in other 'knowledge-based' fields.
Now, I have seen a couple of amazing examples of this - where someone codes something into existence in what seems like an impossibly short amount of time (see the Dilbert strips with Zimbu the monkey programming using his tail for a good illustration of how this is perceived) - but in general I think the emphasis on differences in personal productivity a) ignore experience (which counts a hell of a lot in programming) b) ignores social factors, like the ability to code till 3am because of no other commitments.
Also, the worship of productivity is in my mind at least a factor in presenting the ideal programmer as a truly 'One Dimensional Man' - in the context of the Internet, and 'free software', programmers encounter each other purely as a set of text and an email address - this erasure of the social functions to maintain an ideal which is individualised (and as kelly could abundantly point out, gendered, racialised, 'classed' (if that's the right word), etc.) In turn, this feeds into a kind of identification with the job which is exploited by managers, what I've called in the past '2nd order Taylorism'.
No doubt this could all do with some more research.
Peter -- Peter van Heusden <pvh at egenetics.com> NOTE: I do not speak for my employer, Electric Genetics "Criticism has torn up the imaginary flowers from the chain not so that man shall wear the unadorned, bleak chain but so that he will shake off the chain and pluck the living flower." - Karl Marx, 1844 OpenPGP: 1024D/0517502B : DE5B 6EAA 28AC 57F7 58EF 9295 6A26 6A92 0517 502B