"I think you're making part of Zed's point - better than he did, in fact. There are no famous car/guitar designers, cell phone engineers, or construction worker

"I think you're making part of Zed's point - better than he did, in fact. There are no famous car/guitar designers, cell phone engineers, or construction workers either. " There are famous car/cellphone/guitar designers, (I am not sure about construction workers!) but they (like programmers) are famous within their communities. Even Linus would probably be better recognized by a programmer than a non programmer I think. There are also many many programmers who have contributed to the Linux Kernel and don't have that kind of celebrity. I see this as perfectly fine way for the world to work. Zed seems to expect (or crave) something else. I agree that engineers of products are often unknown (as people) to their consumers. As other people pointed about that is almost the definition of how a product works, except in very rare cases. I was addressing Zed's (implied) expectation this state of affairs was somehow surprising, unexpected or bad, and worth bewailing. At least that was the vibe I got from the post. The idea that we should (in some normative sense, in an ideal world) know the people behind the products we know "better than we know the products" at the risk of being "second class citizens" was what I found bizarre. He takes an obvious truism - most normal people don't know much (or anything) about the creators of the products they use - and then goes off on a rant on how he still gets asked "meaningless" questions for his job interviews. What I was trying to say (no doubt I could have written it down better) is "But that is as it should be". "People like Linus, Carmack, and DHH aren't famous because of their code - they're famous because of their products." I mostly agree - except that a good part of their products (or their leadership position on their products or "fame" ) is or results directly from the code they wrote. " even though I'm completely non-famous - my meager contributions to the open source world have opened a lot of doors and given me more credibility than I otherwise would have had." That is my experience too.