[ironmagma]

Maybe it’s born out of all these times I’ve seen “10x engineers” hired, or “very senior” managers who will “change everything.” There’s just not that much that one human can do that is fundamentally different from what the median human can, so these hires are almost always overblown.

[radiator]

But how is the hiring of those engineers or managers relevant to the current thread, which is about a project explicitly described: "I am a one-man development team doing everything"?

[ironmagma]

Claim: Some people have a higher plane of capability than others, so high that it’s such a difference in scale that it’s a fundamental difference in kind as well.

Situation: “We have a broken company. Let’s hire one of these superhumans to fix everything.” Reality: the person hired is the same as everyone else, so they can’t apply their superhuman strength to fix the situation. Lesson: People are more similar than they seem.

Situation: Complex project seems to be so involved and difficult that it must have been done by someone possessing powers on a different plane than the rest of us. Reality: The creator spent a very long time learning about the concepts and technologies, then spent a shorter, but still long, time building the project. Lesson: Even those who accomplished great things did not do so effortlessly, and not overnight either. Unlike a god, they did not download the “desire to build great things” program and simply execute it.

Judgment of the claim: this appearance of higher kindedness is (mostly) an illusion. Most people are largely the same.

[radiator]

My point was, the two situations are very different. It is wrong to make similar conclusions.

In your first example, the superhuman cannot fix everything because he has to work with other average humans, who drag him down.

In the second case, since he is not forced to work in a team, his superior skills are shown in the result.