<i>The idea that there can be wholly distinct levels to competitive tennis–levels so distinct that what's being played is in essence a whole different game–might seem to you weird and hyperbolic. [...] I have played against men who were on a whole different, higher plateau than I, and I have understood on the deepest and most humbling level the impossibility of beating them, of "solving their game." [...] I feel like I could get on a tennis court with Julian Knowle. He would beat me, perhaps handily, but I don't feel like it would be absurd for me to occupy the same seventy-eight-by-twenty-seventy-foot rectangle as he. The idea of me playing Joyce–or even hitting around with him, which was one of the ideas I was entertaining on the flight to Montreal–is now revealed to me to be in a certain way obscene</i><p>I can relate to this, in the software engineering realm. Most people I've worked with, I feel like we're on the same "league". Some are better than me at certain things, I'm better than them at certain other things, but I generally feel like given enough time and interest, I could do what they do.<p>But there has been a small handful of people I've had the pleasure of working with that I could tell operate on a different level. Their brains work differently. It's hard to explain if you haven't felt it. They're qualitatively different, not just quantitatively. It's wonderful and humbling to see them in action. They also tend to be among the humblest, nicest, most hilarious people I know (I'm looking at you, Matt, STU, ejbs).<p>Incidentally, this is one reason to reject "brilliant jerks". The most brilliant people I know aren't jerks, so "brilliant lovely people" are rare, but they exist. Do not put up with jerks.