The assertions (granted, unsubstantiated) were that the gurus aren't putting their CV on web sites for HR departments to find. They are targeting companies the

The assertions (granted, unsubstantiated) were that the gurus aren't putting their CV on web sites for HR departments to find. They are targeting companies they want to work for. Ward Cunningham is a good name. Lets look at some legendary software engineers... From Ward Cunninghams's linkedin page, you will see he has held two jobs for a long time: Tektronix for 10 years and his own company for 18 years. Tek was his initial hire and he had two short stints at Microsoft and the Eclipse Foundation. He probably applied traditionally to Tek (first job). His titles at Microsoft and Eclipse Foundation make me wonder if he went through the HR department for those jobs. Ditto for AboutUs. Obviously, he did not interview for Cunningham & Cunningham, Inc. Linus Torvalds worked at Transmeta for 6 years, OSDL for 3 1/2 years, and Linux Foundation for 6 1/2 years. I'm sure he never had a traditional job application/interview encounter. Wikipedia lists Ken Thompson as working for Bell Labs, Entrisphere, Inc, and Google. I'm willing to bet he didn't have to run the standard Google gauntlet to get hired there. Wikipedia lists Dennis Ritchie working for Lucent Technologies (currently) and Bell Labs. Not much resume shoveling going on there. The Wikipedia page on Brian Kernighan is somewhat vague, but lists Bell Labs and the Computer Science Department of Princeton University. Guido van Rossum went through more companies than the other gurus listed here. Again, I'm sure the Google interviewers were more nervous than he. Yukihiro Matsumoto has only worked for NaCl according to LinkedIn and Wikipedia. David Heinemeier Hansson is another example: he founded and built a Danish online gaming news website, which he ran until 2001. I believe he went from there to 37Signals. He did some contract work for them and was hired on the basis of his obvious talent. Again, non-traditional.