über-scalable Profession
In his book, The Black Swan , Nassim Taleb classifies professions as scalable and non-scalable. Huh? Here’s what he calls the non-scalable: “Some professions, such as dentists, consultants, or massage professionals, cannot be scaled: there is a cap on the number of patients or clients you can see in a given period of time…In these professions, no matter how highly paid, your income is subject to gravity.” And the scalable ones? “Other professions allow you to add zeroes to your output (and your income), if you do well, at little or no extra effort...If you are an idea person, you do not have to work hard, only think intensely. You do the same work whether you produce a hundred units or a thousand.” Software development was always one of the scalable professions. In recent times, it has become über-scalable. Sam Gerstenzang has a few examples : “WhatsApp had 450 million monthly users and just 32 engineers when it was acquired (for $16 billion). Imgur scaled to over 40 bill...