Can't speak for the OP but I read "hard working" in double quotes as something that's not the same as someone who spent a lot of time perfecting their craft. S

Can't speak for the OP but I read "hard working" in double quotes as something that's not the same as someone who spent a lot of time perfecting their craft. So in the Dilbert sense of the word. I do notice the paper defines it as "someone who is willing to work for more than 8 hour days to deliver the software product". I'm thinking meh. I think hard work at some point is a requirement to achieving excellence in most disciplines, in something like martial arts, or music, pretty much everyone I consider to be great has spent some years where their whole life was the discipline. I'm not really aware of someone who got there by raw talent without the practice (there might be examples). My experience with software engineering is similar. However that's not the same as saying you'll become great by working 10 hour days, i.e. that sense of "hard working". You need to be in the right mindset. Also this sort of folklore is cool but you have to consider the context, great musicians are not necessarily great in any style of music or with any instrument. That said, some people are surprising skilled in broad areas and the skills do tend to transfer within the discipline to some degree. On top of that, to the novice, an intermediate may be considered great. You really need to have some perspective to be able to recognize greatness and appreciate it. EDIT: random btw is that most 6 string guitar chords work just as well with a missing string. Most simple chords have 3 notes in them and so with 6 strings there's enough redundancy. If you know where the root, third and 5th are in the chord (which most intermediate guitar players know) you'll immediately know whether the missing string removes any of those (even if it does the chord will still sound fine, you don't necessarily need all those 3 notes). Transposing on the fly is a little harder, but you don't really need to be a master to do that... So stuff like that may seem like magic but isn't necessarily so... Playing by ear is cool, usually people who start playing young are better at this, especially if this is how they started. This skill, to some degree, is also reasonably common...