It is impossible to reduce this to a blanket statement driven by a single variable, which is precisely what most opinions on many topics end-up being on HN and

It is impossible to reduce this to a blanket statement driven by a single variable, which is precisely what most opinions on many topics end-up being on HN and elsewhere. Example from personal experience: Over a decade ago I hired someone for a sales position at the request of a customer. The guy had no experience in sales and just-about zero domain knowledge. It took about a year to get him comfortable with the domain and the sales process. I think I can say I personally devoted hundreds of hours to this task. What happened? He sucked as a sales person. Never sold enough product to even cover his salary. Armed with all that training and new domain knowledge, he left 18 months after starting. Where did he go? He landed himself a job with a competitor. Of course! He sounded like a f-ing expert! He used my words (the real domain expert) to get hired. He has made a ten+ year career on top of what we taught him. We never recovered any of the time, money and effort expended to help him out. Why did you hire him? What kind of an idiot keeps someone like that around? His son had a brain tumor. One of our customers told me this guy needed a serious break because of the medical bills and being a single dad of two kids. That's why. I was just trying to help someone out. Instead, we spent hundreds of thousands of dollars training and paying him, only to, quite literally, train an employee for a competitor. Imagine my surprise when a competitor, quite literally, gets someone we spent an entire year training. Brilliant. I am one of those people who has always liked helping others. This guy blew that fuse in my brain, likely permanently. I have never gone out of my way to help an employee since. Small things here and there, sure, nothing more. This is why I say you can't reduce reality to single-variable explanations. There's a word for that: Fantasy.