You Can Be a Great Designer and Be Completely Unknown

works for SWEs too - I've had the pleasure working with a bunch of amazing SWEs in my almost 3 decades in the industry, 9 out of top 10 if I rank them do not have a Github account or blog or post sht on "X" or wherever... Just do amazing sht at work and go home to their families :)

Absolutely. And there are plenty of occupations where even a Michael Jordan level talent would go totally unknown and unappreciated. Accountant. Plumber. Chemist. Many more.

And contrarywise fairly mid-level professional athletes in a lot of sports are known at some level by a lot of people. Likely actors too. I assume if you look at Wikipedia you’ll find a lot more articles about journeyman actors than you’ll find about CEOs of major companies.