That ideally what scouts are for. Digging deep for treasure.

But talent correlates too. It's rare to see someone self taught that can be competitive with years of conditioning. So there's arguments both ways.

True, but how many skip managers are going to go scouting in a large tech company for a great developer who is working on the internal performance review system?

The skip manager has a lot to do with promotions in my experience.

Yeah I agree. For sports, that player may end up being a spark for a billion dollar campaign. For a dev, not so much. They want to try and commoditize that role anyway.