when people look over my coworkers shoulder and see his 23K HN point count at the top of his screen, they acknowledge hes calling the shots in code reviews.

Are you serious? This sounds like an awful workplace.

lol no im joking, but that would be hilarious if true

Why - because he's got nothing better to do than post on HN all day?

Sadly, HN doesn't provide the far more interesting statistics of average karma per post and submission, respectively.