He's not talking about either an ordinary programmer or a cracker but the Mythical Genius Hacker(tm): Yes, I am serious; a hacker on a roll may be able to produce, in a period of a few months, something that a small development group (say, 7-8 people) would have a hard time getting together over a year. Whether claims of programmer productivity variation are true or not, I'm dubious that the most productive programmer necessarily goes by the title "Hacker" or necessarily operates in the "mad genius" fashion.

As a software engineer, I'd encourage managers to avoid the "hacker" who is more productive because only he understands the poorly designed system he created. The genius hacker myth is counter-productive here.