Well, I'm a day late, so no one will ever see this, but I have to disagree with your disagreement. After reading lots of hacker news and Slashdot, following my

Well, I'm a day late, so no one will ever see this, but I have to disagree with your disagreement. After reading lots of hacker news and Slashdot, following my friends in the Valley, and getting rejected by Google 3 times, I too thought that I was worthless if not a Ninja or Rockstar who does all those things you mentioned. But recently I had a recruiter friend pass my resume around and my current office has begun hiring. I've since learned that there is a huge section of established corporations with projects that just need enough 1xers to get the job done. They'll pay competitive rates without even seeing a Github portfolio of outstanding breakthroughs in machine learning. Anyway, I think you've been focusing on the same small circle of hiring that needs the best of the best to turn their crap idea into the next Google through spectacular algorithm design, or Google themselves, who has so many applicants they have to reject all but the very best just to whittle down the pile of applicants to manageable size, but like everyone else has been discussing, mediocrity is still the norm out there; there's a whole world of mediocre developers making mediocre progress on non-earth-shattering stuff that still needs getting done.