Whenever I entertain the "employee #N" daydream, I fantasize that I might have negatively altered the trajectory of the company: butterfly effect and all that.

Whenever I entertain the "employee #N" daydream, I fantasize that I might have negatively altered the trajectory of the company: butterfly effect and all that. By hiring me, they might have missed out on hiring engineer X, who sneezed one day at lunch and gave designer Y a cold, who became inspired to doodle a graphic while out sick, which subconsciously cheered up a key customer prospect because of something his daughter said that day, which leans him towards signing a big contract, and that made all the difference. Or perhaps it was a more direct action or inaction of mine that changed the course of history. Is the success of an endeavor highly sensitive to small perturbations in the timeline? I'm guessing most of us don't buy into the mythology of the all-powerful Idea and Founders. Every employee and action matters. The details matter. If I could go back in time and swap in for employee #8 at MS, it would probably no longer be the MS we know. Or perhaps we wouldn't know of it at all. Perhaps best not to sweat these missed opportunities, and instead keep making whatever we're doing right now the next MS, or whatever you define as outrageous success.