I think all of us have these thoughts and feelings. I'm in an engineering team, surrounding by incredibly skilled, experienced but most of all _committed_ (embe

I think all of us have these thoughts and feelings. I'm in an engineering team, surrounding by incredibly skilled, experienced but most of all _committed_ (embedded) engineers - and I'm the only guy on the business side. If you've ever felt stupid, just think how the sole marketing guy feels in an otherwise fully engineering focused company. It's not a nice feeling. Anyway. I've come to realise (suspect?) a few things: - People who achieve _Great Things_ are, more often than not, unidimensional. They focus most of their lives one single thing (or a small select set of related things). What this means is that they achieve highly in one area, but are somewhat useless in many others (even somewhat basic ones). It's a personal choice whether you think this is OK or not. The book Range by David Epstein is an interesting read (or if you like horrible business buzzwords, 'T shaped people') - None of the extreme achievers would be able to do what they do, without the rest of us. I don't feel this is some new age woo-woo stuff to make us minions feel better, but in reality if the base of society doesn't exist or function well, you can't go do the cool 'big think' stuff. Without farmers, Elon would probably either starve or have to go grow his own crops (bad example maybe, whatever). - The people that do achieve _Amazing Things_ sit at (I believe) a very special intersection of inherent capability (e.g. ability to integrate information quickly), personality (often very driven and quite selfish, just lucking into very beneficial mindsets early on, don't suffer from depression), familial advantages (wealth, exceptional early education), geographic advantage (not just first world wealthy country, but even micro-geographic advantages, such as say Silicon Valley vs a small rural town) and probably a few others I don't have a grasp on. So in my mind, the combination of the above factors not only enables _some_ people to achieve wildly, but also puts them on a path that they almost can't stray from. This strays into pre-determinism I suppose, but (in my mind) it's more related to a series of environmental and personal factors playing out, as opposed to Some Large Guiding Force. I dunno, that's my current view at least.