[wnolens]

Exactly. He did his job, and was paid handsomely for it (and whether or not it became anything).

He leveraged massive resources to do it and was allowed to tap people with multi-decades of experience (even implicitly - you think he build the execution engine where his "test harness" ran?). Not to mention that he essentially wrote a wrapper around an API..

If he put his total comp this pity party would shrink to one.

[znpy]

That’s the reality of being employed, really.

No matter the accomplishment, I doubt they would have been able to create copilot outside Microsoft and thus without Microsoft’s resources (computing infrastructure, engineering talent and software ecosystem).

And the “join a startup” is a dumb piece of advice as you’d be still making some one else profit.

Create your own company, and face the likelihood of bankruptcy.

[ZephyrBlu]

Driving a brand new product from the ground up is not in the job description for almost all levels. Only maybe if you're one step below Distinguished Engineer.

[wnolens]

It is (or was) explicitly in the role guideline at MSFT for principal level. There's lots of variation at that level. Some sit on their butt and only chime in when they have expertise, others prototype new ideas of their own. That's how a few things I know came to be.