How's that High School Diploma Treating You?

Well.  The world does separate people based on talent, skills, focus and motivation.

Yes, it separates people in many other ways: looks, attitude, friendliness, anger issues, etc.

But talent, drive, achievement and persistence are always a good mix - and it doesn't really matter what you look like, or if you're shy or shallow, or kind of weird.

Other people's opinions mean little when you got the right mix.   

Or, maybe smart, successful, and powerful people (like CEOs) can get it wrong.

Is that right?   PB
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From Recode.com:

Ex-Googler Sebastian Thrun says the going rate for self-driving talent is $10 million per person

Now he wants to train more engineers for the fast-growing industry, since there are simply not enough.

When Sebastian Thrun started working on self-driving cars at Google in 2007, few people outside of the company took him seriously.

“I can tell you very senior CEOs of major American car companies would shake my hand and turn away because I wasn’t worth talking to,” said Thrun, now the co-founder and CEO of online higher education startup Udacity, in an interview with Recode earlier this week.

A little less than a decade later, dozens of self-driving startups have cropped up while automakers around the world clamor, wallet in hand, to secure their place in the fast-moving world of fully automated transportation.

And these companies are hungry for talent and skill sets many don't have.

“Uber has just bought a half-a-year-old company [Otto] with 70 employees for almost $700 million,” Thrun said. “If you look at GM, they spent $1 billion on its acquisition of Cruise. These are mostly talent acquisitions. The going rate for talent these days is $10 million.”

Thrun means per person, a lofty number which is likely to be getting even larger with time and even more demand...
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Link: http://www.recode.net/2016/9/17/12943214/sebastian-thrun-self-driving-talent-pool