leaving out the years that he worked at AMD and LSI is a great eg of how a lionizing narrative works. it creates the impression of superhuman genius, which confers a valuable aura that has material impact on morale, negotiations, etc. Similar to “Singapore was a fishing village”

if you want to become successful, it helps to study successful people and groups of people– but you wanna be very careful not to buy the narrative wholesale, because there’s practically always a bunch of lionizing and valorizing going on that misrepresents reality