I think this blog falls into a common issue of conflating natural talent/skills with what the person does to cultivate that talent.
In other words, Simon is an anomaly and it's not clear that what he does makes him exceptional so much as he is exceptional AND he does all that stuff. You don't end up principal infrastructure engineer at Shopify at 26 years old after immigrating at 18 years old without being something special. He's probably fun to be around, but take the average human and put him through what he described and I'm pretty sure you just get an exhausted person without the amazing part.