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Any nominees in your opinion?

Sure. It's not a problem to find them. Everybody knows some, and a lot of times they cannot be acknowledged publicly unless their boss is very secure. There is the guy down the hall who keeps the network running, one of a staff of 20. There is the lady at the post office who gets the mail into the boxes by 9 AM every day no matter what. There is the receptionist at the Blood Bank who knows every donor and their schedule and never misses calling a day ahead. Not every doer has invented an anti-matter discombobulator or a fantastic way to extract oil from oilshale, but all doers do what they do very well. If all the doers stopped doing, the country would stop. Just one person in 20. Even on the TransAlaska Pipeline construction, it was known by the engineers that out of 200 employed at the camp, 20 were carrying the camp. Just look for that one in ten, one in twenty. They are easy to spot if you look.

Good points, I call those the "doers" who actually contribute.

I'm trying to think of a prime mover, the entreprenuer who creates (literally) the industry that those fine folks work in.

The best I can come up with, flaws and all, would be the Wright Brothers. Many fine mechanics and pilots followed, and some moochers (Glenn Curtis?) but the Wright Brothers were the initial prime movers.

Fun game to play when I'm too lazy to reread her longer works.

One in 10, one in twenty is right. I have seen this play out in my own life. At the risk of flattering myself, I became very alienated at the last job I had. A boss who shamelessly backed her favorites at the expense of others, coworkers who had high opinions of themselves but resented my speed and accuracy, and both my boss and coworkers who resented the fact that I had a pretty cheery attitudee about life, quietly did a ton of stuff under the radar, and also never really helped them do their stuff (since after all, they never really helped me).

After I quit they went bonkers - very venemous and vindictive, while I never lost my cool. In fact, they pretty much ran me out of town but I didn't care - I had quit and already had myself set up in my new city. But the morale: they took the contributions with glee, but resented the person who provided.

What my contacts at the firm did tell me after I left, was the staff's inability to cope with the workload. Morale worsened. Many complaints of the workload somehow "tripling" - though it never outwardlly occured to the crew that the workload didn't triple - they were just now missing the contributions of the one key player. Too many weekends for the staff at the office - weekends that I quietly did, without complaint and without making a lot of noise.

We were a staff of one supervisor, 3 main project managers, and 2 gofers. I was one of the project managers. After I left, it all hit the fan. My boss's department deteriorated. They simply couldn't keep up. One of the other case managers suddenly quit 3 months after I did, with a cover-story about going to "grad school" though he simply left because he couldn't take it any more. The people they hired to replace me and him were way too green - the first replacement ended up quitting in a week, as he just didn't like the scene or the people. I don't blame him.

All of this makes me understand just how dead-on right Ayn was. I tell anyone who will listen, "Go where you are celebrated, not where you are tolerated." Misery doesn't love company, it demands it!!! And the average folks will truly resent those that have a good handle on the job abnd life in general.

Word from my old office is that the whole department will be run out of town and outsourced, probably around early 2003. The scuttlebut is that they appear to have no idea this is in the works. You reap what you sow.