Indeed; I thought I was very good at math until I landed in a course where there was this guy who just instantly grasped everything and it's consequences without having ever seen the subject we were taught. It was great talking/working with him but it deterred me from pursuing math as major; I reasoned that if there is someone so incredibly brilliant that he can replace this entire auditorium by himself, what am I doing here? I was very young at the time and I now know that brilliance by itself is not enough. He is not working in math now but is a programmer somewhere; so him replacing the entire auditorium for math didn't happen.

For super programmers (definitely there are plenty of them like Carmack) this of course does not fly; one super programmer can maybe do the work of the entire auditorium, however the rest of the auditorium is needed as well as there is a shortage. Which is different from math, physics etc.