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> John Carmack (Doom, Oculus) There are hundreds of thousands of companies whose needs are so pedestrian (whether they want to admit it or not) that paying for

> John Carmack (Doom, Oculus) There are hundreds of thousands of companies whose needs are so pedestrian (whether they want to admit it or not) that paying for John Carmack wouldn’t be worth it. There’s no La Liga team that wouldn’t get better (and wouldn’t make a shitload more money) with Messi on their roster.

kgwgk 6y ago
And there are tens of thousands of football teams for which paying for Messi wouldn't be worth it (including many of the teams you refer to, in fact). I'm not sure what's your point.
- yt-sdb 6y ago
  I think OP’s point is that stardom in certain domains, e.g. sports, can pay for itself via merchandise, ticket sales, advertising. OP is arguing that this isn’t really true in programming.
  - tovacinni 6y ago
    It sort of can; something I observed while I was still a student at a "top CS university" is that there were certain individuals (superstars) in the school that a lot of people looked up to, and whichever companies they chose to do internships at or work full-time at, everyone else would want to go there. This happened even if the company was a mostly no-name startup. So purely from a recruiting standpoint; if this sort of phenomenon happens at an undergraduate level, I can believe that just having John Carmack on your team alone can bring more talent in, for potentially cheaper just because of increased supply.
- paulcole 6y ago
  Messi’s marketing value would be incredible. There’s more to a sports team than on-field performance.
  - kgwgk 6y ago
    And somehow he's staying at FC Barcelona because he didn't find anyone willing to pay to have him transferred.
    - paulcole 6y ago
      I thought that was because his release clause was way too high? Just because somebody can add value doesn’t mean that their current cost is equal to their value. Any top flight club in the world would fall over themselves to pay Messi’s weekly wages. Nobody wants to pay nearly a billion euro for that right.
deleted 6y ago
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dmurray 6y ago
That's not comparing like with like. There are 20 La Liga teams, all of which are say in the top 200 football teams in the world. Adding Carmack to one of the "hundreds of thousands" of companies would be like adding Messi to your local pub team: it would make it better, you'd win your local league, but it wouldn't pay the $20 million a year that would make it "worth it". The number of companies that could consider hiring Carmack is maybe 1-2 orders of magnitude above those who could consider hiring Messi.
- paulcole 6y ago
  Except Messi adds incredible value beyond his on-field performance.
jackcviers3 6y ago
> pedestrian You could argue that someone like John would invent a system in a few months that simply took a very low level engineering mind to run that would cover all those needs. You pay him for one year and get ten years of business out of his system. There are 10x programmers, even 1000x programmers. They invent protocols, programming languages, databases, IDEs, tools, operating systems, cryptology, algorithms, frameworks and libraries that are used at all your 100,0000+ companies doing pedestrian stuff to do the pedestrian stuff. Try to imagine a completely closed source world where everything had to be made from scratch. What percentage of those pedestrian companies would succeed? These people are and were giants that have provided billions in revenue to the world economy. That's indisputable. We stand on their shoulders, and because they are broad enough to look like an endless plain to us in the multitude, we claim that there are no giants.

kgwgk 6y ago

And there are tens of thousands of football teams for which paying for Messi wouldn't be worth it (including many of the teams you refer to, in fact). I'm not sure what's your point.

yt-sdb 6y ago
I think OP’s point is that stardom in certain domains, e.g. sports, can pay for itself via merchandise, ticket sales, advertising. OP is arguing that this isn’t really true in programming.
- tovacinni 6y ago
  It sort of can; something I observed while I was still a student at a "top CS university" is that there were certain individuals (superstars) in the school that a lot of people looked up to, and whichever companies they chose to do internships at or work full-time at, everyone else would want to go there. This happened even if the company was a mostly no-name startup. So purely from a recruiting standpoint; if this sort of phenomenon happens at an undergraduate level, I can believe that just having John Carmack on your team alone can bring more talent in, for potentially cheaper just because of increased supply.
paulcole 6y ago
Messi’s marketing value would be incredible. There’s more to a sports team than on-field performance.
- kgwgk 6y ago
  And somehow he's staying at FC Barcelona because he didn't find anyone willing to pay to have him transferred.
  - paulcole 6y ago
    I thought that was because his release clause was way too high? Just because somebody can add value doesn’t mean that their current cost is equal to their value. Any top flight club in the world would fall over themselves to pay Messi’s weekly wages. Nobody wants to pay nearly a billion euro for that right.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

dmurray 6y ago

That's not comparing like with like. There are 20 La Liga teams, all of which are say in the top 200 football teams in the world. Adding Carmack to one of the "hundreds of thousands" of companies would be like adding Messi to your local pub team: it would make it better, you'd win your local league, but it wouldn't pay the $20 million a year that would make it "worth it". The number of companies that could consider hiring Carmack is maybe 1-2 orders of magnitude above those who could consider hiring Messi.

paulcole 6y ago
Except Messi adds incredible value beyond his on-field performance.

jackcviers3 6y ago

> pedestrian You could argue that someone like John would invent a system in a few months that simply took a very low level engineering mind to run that would cover all those needs. You pay him for one year and get ten years of business out of his system. There are 10x programmers, even 1000x programmers. They invent protocols, programming languages, databases, IDEs, tools, operating systems, cryptology, algorithms, frameworks and libraries that are used at all your 100,0000+ companies doing pedestrian stuff to do the pedestrian stuff. Try to imagine a completely closed source world where everything had to be made from scratch. What percentage of those pedestrian companies would succeed? These people are and were giants that have provided billions in revenue to the world economy. That's indisputable. We stand on their shoulders, and because they are broad enough to look like an endless plain to us in the multitude, we claim that there are no giants.