> The funniest part of this quote is that Steve Martin is just not very good.

But, he is funny. Maybe not your brand of humor, but one thing Steve Martin did bring to the table was his own unique brand of humor. And this is what he brought to his movies, too. You watched a movie with Steve Martin? You knew what you were getting, and you wanted it.

I think Steve forgot to add that you need to be so good, they can't ignore you and you also need to have a brand that they can't ignore nowadays.

Just look at The Rock. He has a brand, and a particular style - and he doesn't deviate. And he's wildly successful because of it.

This is a rather stupid idea, at least on the surface.

So, here's a really, really good somebody. How does it matter? He at least has to deliver his greatness to somebody else - and that's already a question, since that somebody else could be subjective, not competent, not interested etc. So our somebody, let's call him A, has to deliver to somebody special, let's call her B. Then what? Suppose that B is impressed - does it matter for other people? It might - but then again that requires certain conditions, which further constrain B and also put some constraints to those other people, C. Or A should be specifically great so that there are enough of B's who can, each independently, realize A's greatness. In addition to constraints on C, there are additional constraints on A - for example, A's abilities should be (e.g.) public.

I'd assume there are cases when there are truly great people - more than we usually think - which are almost completely ignored by others as a whole, because to be great enough at something public enough is a rather tall order. In addition there are less-great A's, who, even if well known, aren't considered good enough to often enough be not ignored.

So, it's like an advice from a billionaire about how to become a millionaire, from his perspective. In practice, the advice is both rather trivial and rather useless. I wonder if Steve Martin had a deeper thought at the moment.

I think you're overgeneralizing. The question he answered was "How do you make it in show business or whatever?" I think "whatever" was limited to performance skills. Comedy, drama; stage, radio; scripted, improvisational, that sort of thing. And performance is all about capturing and holding people's attention, so it makes sense that focusing on your skill is the most direct path to success.

As opposed to, say, business, which is much more focused on social relationships, and where success is much more determined by who you know and who they know they can introduce you to.

That's not to say his advice is good. Just that it should be interpreted as being intended for a particular industry.

I love this quote by Martin, and I have always interpreted it as not only being good at your job but learning skills that might even be tangential. If you're a good developer, learn how to speak/write. At least one of these two things. Either speak at conferences and/or meetups, or write Blog articles. Practise, practise and practise writing or speaking about your work. If you cannot, then participate in communities where your opinion can be heard: GitHub through triaging, discussing improvement proposals to languages and/or frameworks you use. Become good at disassembling code, reading someone else's code and figuring out what it does without having to ask everything. These skills have helped my career more than the actual tech actually has, honestly. It got me my last two jobs. Every business is show business.