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Re:The Alpha Engineer by bdehaaff on Sunday July 21, 2013 @11:52PM (#6081641)
Thanks for the comments. So you do agree that Brunelleschi lead with his brilliant design and Buffett does dramatically outperform his peers. Jordan never lost a championship and would handily beat 5 mediocre basketball players from the general population -- remember that every player who makes the NBA is an alpha. I edited out the final bullet as it unnecessarily complicates the post.
Re:The Alpha Engineer by brent_noorda on Monday July 22, 2013 @01:01AM (#6081860)
yes with Brunelleschi's lead (but he still needs a big team), but since Buffet only outperforms by about 15% I wouldn't call that "dramatic" in the context of your post. As for Jordan, I suspect five of me could beat one Michael Jordon, and I suck at basketball.

Maybe you could better make your point by avoiding analogies and staying within our hackery field for alpha examples. For example, a single Linus Torvalds in a weekend could put together git, which could then keep thousands of mediocre programmers confused for years :-)

Re:The Alpha Engineer by rdouble on Monday July 22, 2013 @01:13AM (#6081900)
Five of you would not beat Michael Jordan, even now that he's 50. You're underestimating how much better the best people are than the average. You're really underestimating how much better they are than people who suck.