OSCON keynote: Standing out in the crowd

If a superstar is defined as a person who gets a great deal more done in a particular domain than most of their colleages, then by only considering people who get a great deal more done in environments which require diving in and ignoring a high level of idiotic confrontation, you are dismissing other people who, by their nature and abilities, would get a great deal more done than most of their colleages in a _different_ environment.

By that definition, the latter class of people are superstars in less confrontational environments, and when we fail to make those environments, we are losing access to their potential.

Do you mean that a true superstar would transcend their environment and get on with what needs doing in _any_ environment? Certainly there's a type of person who does that.

But I suspect that many of the programmers we call superstars because they are outstandingly productive in competitive, harsh environments would fare quite badly in less confrontational, more polite environments - at least, until they'd had time to adjust their personality to suit.