Google couldn't buy a page rank library unfortunately. Nor can they evolve search or develop tensorflow with people that just work off of libraries.

And what proportion of HN readers are in that situation ?

Not that where I worked wound not have built things from scratch - still whish I had had the budget to use ML for one project but with hard ware costs of £250,000 just for the hardware in early 80's it wasn't cost-effective.

And there in lies the problem. HN extrapolates its skill set to be the need of ALL companies. And companies should only test for that.

I do systems for a living. There is no way I would be successful if all I knew were frameworks.