On the surface your comment makes sense but if you read his Twitter thread, he's not saying "do what I did"..

He's actually giving decent advice which is make yourself a source of knowledge on something within your chosen field.

Most people who are just starting out are not going to create the next amazing thing, but it's within reach for them to become a subject-matter-expert (or at least start that journey) so that they can use that knowledge to help them make things (and in the process support their peers and benefit from knowledge sharing).

I had an Aural Skills (pitch training) professor in college who had perfect pitch. At first I felt kind of cheated, "how can you help me if you didn't have to go through this yourself?" But in a manner of speaking the professor still had to go through it themself and hone their skills, and their breadth of knowledge was much wider than their own personal experience in music training. This professor had helped countless students master pitch, and they could see much further across the landscape of music study than I could.

I strongly disagree with this sentiment. You'd be surprised how effective people that are "smart enough" can be. I've become less and less impressed with people's innate "genius" and more impressed with their work ethic and focus.

I've wasted so much time in my life trying to learn things top down... that is, learn bits and pieces of something to complete a task without fundamental knowledge of the thing I'm working on. I've noticed "geniuses" never work this way. They insist on knowing their fundamentals first and work up from there.

A genius' mental framework for problem solving is so well developed that it just seems like they won DNA lottery. Carmack is incredible at what he does, but there are likely many intellectual things that he is terrible at because he has no mental framework for solving those types of problems. It ultimately would take him thousands of hours to be great at those things like the rest of us plebs.

Depends on what part you listen to. Carmack's work ethic is legendary and ability to output high volumes and exceptional work are things a lot of people can aspire to, especially startup entrepreneurs. I certainly have taken those words to heart in my business.

> getting career advice from John Carmack is just like getting career advice from a lotto winner, not everyone has the luck/genius

To a large extent, career success is the result of a combination of hard work and luck. The more you have of one, the less you have to rely on the other.

I believe his advice is based on what he has seen in his colleagues and in jobseekers as much as what he himself has experienced, if not moreso.