Not to be argumentative, but $1M isn’t very much money, certainly not for a project of this scope. It’s a testament to the creativity, competence, and dedication of those involved they’ve gotten this far with such little funding. Hopefully their early success will attract more resources to this very worthy project.
What do you mean by "of this scope"? The winning solution was produced by students and interns who coordinated over the Internet, in less than a year. The problem isn't scope, the problem is attracting lots of bright individuals to work on such a task (for free). And offering a substantial monetary incentive to the winner is probably the best way to do that.
And yes, $1 million is very substantial for an individual. And the cool thing about offering it as a prize (from the point of view of the organizers, that is) is they only have to pay one person or team, although potentially thousands ultimately contribute to the solution, directly or indirectly.
That's not at all what they did. They explicitly made endpoints to doll out the prizes, to ensentivize collaboration. That tactical aspect of the the whole project and how they set it up is worth highlighting on its own.
I think most of all this is a testament to just how much raw talent and intellectual potential is locked up in the winner-takes-all dynamics and shortsightedness of the stock market. Imagine the exploits and results in a world where everyone had the baseline resources and opportunities for extra funding for pursuing niche interests.
Most of the developers are. They might not have the right background and so it might take an extra year or two to get up to speed with the difficult areas of this project. However most developers I know have the "smarts" to switch to a different complex area and figure it out. Sure most of them are just doing standard CRUD apps that move a bit of data - but that is because that is what we need a lot of not because they can't do something else.
Problem is determining which candidates who were preselected for cramming Leetcode for comp are actually any good. Can't see how going for handsomely paid tech folks is any better than enthusiasts from academia.
