[nickpeterson]

I’m sure all these people were talented, but it reinforces my own belief that the most important things are passion and focus. I feel like the tech world fixates on 10x programmers like Carmack, but motivated people can pull off amazing things.

[Loughla]

I think for most hiring, regardless of industry, the secret is searching for passion, focus, (I would add) ability/willingness to learn new skills, and a positive attitude toward other humans.

Specific job skills can be taught or learned. If you have the right attitude, positive outlook, and are inherently someone who learns things, you can be very successful in most jobs.

Too often, hiring filters for specific job skills/credentials. Because these are supposed to be a proxy for the softer skills. It's not as effective, but much easier to deploy at scale, I think.

[underlipton]

There are a lot of people who are loathe to admit this, because they draw a lot of their self-worth from their expertise and the success derived from it. To say that most people, with the right attitude, could perform just as well is anathema. They get and keep jobs, but their behavior is often toxic and keeps teams from success. In extreme cases, they may jealously guard their domain and undermine coworkers.

On the flip-side, there are a lot of people dealing with trauma of one kind of another. Outwardly, they may seem to be negative or acerbic or closed-minded, when, internally, they are trying mightily to get their passion and earnestness to break through a wall of their own bitterness or anxiety.

I don't know that recruiting or management have reliable methods of dealing with either pro-socially.

[thinkingtoilet]

I have built some truly awesome teams and besides a base level of knowledge, the only thing I care about is attitude. Another huge factor is passions, I always ask what they do outside of work. If you are passionate about something you know how to focus and care about the details. This strategy has been very successful for me.

[Cthulhu_]

Carmack was the giant whose shoulders a lot of games - including Half-Life - stood on; I'd say he's a 100x or 1000x even, but then, engine developers are usually unknown and underrated. The work he did and what the Unreal engine now does is not to be underestimated.

[filoleg]

> engine developers are usually unknown and underrated

As a testament to their (the original id software team that had both Johns) great efforts and legacy, they pretty much invented the concept of a game engine to start with. At that time, most games were written as a one and done type of a package deal.

Given that the team wanted to push the technical edge with the games consistently, they wanted to have some reusable/modifiable core that they could use across multiple projects, have visual level editors, etc., they converged on “accidentally” creating a game engine and coining that term. I forgot which game was the one that led to the creation of it for them, iirc it was one of the earlier Commander Keen games, but my memory might be failing me here. They didn’t even have the goal of creating a game engine, they just ended up getting there and then realizing what they did as they were trying to build their reusable “toolset.”

[z3phyr]

Carmack the pizza guy. He did not have any computer science education at a formal institute.

[bluedino]

Well, he did go to University of Missouri for a year (not sure if he took compsci or?)

[qiine]

they fixate on the Carmack's but forgot that the Romero's are important too !

[masfoobar]

"they fixate on the Carmack's but forgot that the Romero's are important too !"

Very true -- You can create an amazing game engine (carmack) but it wont sell unless you have talented people pushing it capabilities (romero)

From memory, referring to Doom and Quake 1, Romero built the level editor for said games. Quake, I believe, was created on NextStep machines. Romero (and others) were also the ideas of creating the world.