> No there aren’t.

You underestimate the odds of talent in a population of 8 billion humans.

> If you think you’re all that, don’t blame your company for “not getting the opportunity”. Please. You already have all the tools you need to code. Make something cool!

There are neurosurgery robots operating with my code running in the background for several years now. I am now working on ophthalmic surgery software for sub-retinal operations. I would think that is actually kind of pretty "cool!".

However, I still know full well that I am a cog in a big machine. I still know full well that my impact is not world shattering. And I still very much think "fuck you pay me!".

My self worth is pinned by family and friends. Work is fun but it's a side quest. If you think differently that is ok, and so am I.

Stephen Jay Gould in "The Panda's Thumb": "I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops"

(whilst double-checking my memory of where that came from, I found the obligatory LinkedIn post using it as an advert for consultancy services: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/einstein-cotton-fields-sweats...)

> There are neurosurgery robots operating with my code running in the background for several years now. I am now working on ophthalmic surgery software for sub-retinal operations. I would think that is actually kind of pretty "cool!".

That’s super cool dude! Surgery robots are pretty world shattering for the people whose lives are saved by them. Contributing to that sounds like something well worth feeling proud of too.

Surgery bots are cool. My software just keeps track of drugs

As someone that has relied on such devices to survive cancer - thank you.

You must think I'm cooler than I really am. I don't even do any devices. Just boring ass inventory control.

There are a lot more drug infusions than there are surgeries so you win!

I don’t even know where to begin with this comment. It’s a gross mischaracterization of what was being said for starters.

Its not a mischaracterization, its a projection: if you don't do something that parent commenter believes is important then you are not important.

Moral : before starting new job always ask parent commenter are this new job is important for him?

That’s not an accurate summary of my beliefs. Maybe this would be clearer:

If you want to be interesting, choose to do something interesting. Luck is rarely the limiting factor in your creative output.

Thanks for explanation.

> If you want to be interesting, choose to do something interesting.

Interesting for who? For you or for someone else?

I just finished 1 month at clown school doing an intensive performance class. In clowning we talk a lot about coming on stage with a dream. A dream to do something great. To impress the audience. To move mountains with your words and presence. If you come on stage with no dream, the show is dead.

I think work is the same. If you go into work each day with a dream, it has life. You are there for a reason. You love your work. You want to change the world. Whatever. But if you’re going in to work each day with no dream of your own, you are a walking corpse.

Redis will bit rot. LuaJIT will bit rot. Jonathan Blow did make some fantastic games, but even then it's in a sea of games that are pretty great. Everyone is pretty small in the long run.

Yea this is as classic fallacy.

This famous talk outlines it: https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html but theres a huge amount of factors that go into becoming one of those guys.

Its not just talent, or desire, or luck.

Its:

  - Talent - obviously have to be really good to even do anything in the first place
  - Vision - Need to have a goal of some sort to accomplish something 
  - Decision making - The goal needs to actually be something the world finds useful. 
  -  Drive - Be able to take constant set backs and negative feedback and believe in yourself to an almost delusional level. 
  - Consistency - This means doing  and thinking about your "thing" for a REALLY REALLY long time. Like weekends and holidays and ignore family and etc...

The talk above goes into it pretty in depth, but theres no mystery about it. You need ALL those things and no less. People who achieve at this level aren't accidents. They are simply not only talented in their fields, but also in areas of being able to consume volumes of information and handle failures. They're the ones getting up at 6AM every day working and thinking about their "problem" and going to bed dreaming about it, for years.

You can be a 10x developer, but you also need to be 10x in several other areas to actually accomplish valuable things. Theres a grand canyon of difference between them and everyone else.

Been in software dev for 43 years. Done the 6am and 96 hour weeks. Then realised I'd missed a big part of my kids growing up, and once they were dead, spending little time with my parents. Too busy you see.

I'd recommend people really think about the costs.

The truth is almost certainly between those extremes. People who never put themselves in a place where they can do something amazing are obviously much less likely to do so.

Equally, there are many, many talented people out there who never achieve recognition for what they do or were capable of.

You may not want to hear this (I certainly didn't when I felt similarly)...but perspective does change with age/personal life...with all due respect do you have kids? A partner? Any major commitments outside work? That's an enormous part of OP's statement.

People don't stop being talented/smart when they have kids/families/personal lives...but they will have less time and their perspectives do change.

It's a balance/spectrum where most of us end up somewhere in between two cliches: do what you love and you never work a day in your life on one end & work to live not live to work on the other.

Your response is completely out of line with what you were responding to.