I guess there’s a lot of loaded language it’s not really worth debating. But I would never claim they’re ALL smarter than EVERYONE else.

But I would expect them to be smart and have relevant experience that everyone else doesn’t have, and I expect the companies offering these salaries aren’t doing it for fun but because they believe their IP or ability to generate IP is very hard to come by, and it’s better to monopolize that talent than let competitors do so. If they could hire 10 people equally as good for 1/10 the price then they would do so. But I’m sure there’s also a large dose of gambling too; even in sports highly anticipated freshman drafts can turn into duds.

> If they could hire 10 people equally as good for 1/10 the price then they would do so.

I think this is where the misunderstanding is. In this context it is not 10 times as much in salary - where it is already highly improbable that a single person provides 10 times as much value as 10 other highly motivated candidates.

You have to increase by orders of magnitude.

Remember that these threads exists in the context of the posted article.