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Just went through that thread, I can't believe this wasn't a team of like 20 people.

It's crazy to me that apple would put one guy on a project this important. At my company (another faang), I would have the ceo asking me for updates and roadmaps and everything. I know that stuff slows me down, but even without that, I don't think I could ever do something like this... I feel like I do when I watch guitar youtubers, just terrible

I hope you were at least compensated like a team of 20 engineers :P

discuss

nxobject|4 months ago

History doesn't repeat, but it does rhyme: the initial (re)bootstrapping of OS X for Intel was done by one person, too.

https://www.quora.com/Apple-company/How-does-Apple-keep-secr...

AdamN|4 months ago

Sometimes (often?), one very dedicated and focused person is better than a team of 20+. In fact companies would do well to recognize these situations and accommodate them better.

ferguess_k|4 months ago

Found some gems buried in the comments:

    > Back then, Apple had a sabbatical program that encouraged (mandated?)     employees to take six consecutive weeks off every five years.

This is really a good take. I can't imagine companies give sabbatical programs nowadays. You still have your vacations so JK took 12 weeks (OP mentioned in the same comment). It was a boon for any system programmer who needs to clear his mind or deepen his thoughts.

markus_zhang|4 months ago

This is amazing. I wonder what it took to port MacOS from PowerPC to Intel. Every assembly language part must be rewritten, that’s for sure. Anything else?

markus_zhang|4 months ago

I think a single 10x developer is really good for this kind of system programming projects.