thanks kat, that does make a lot of sense. i think i understand better now how they work.
i also find it ironic, that until recently andrew and jonathan were also mere mortals, and yet have now been granted god like powers, he he.
seriously, i'm not really envious of them. i would not want their responsibility. but likewise, if someone offered me a job in ui designing an app, i would turn it down unless i had prior ui experience at a professional level, and any app i had worked on had been successful with the users.
i do however apparently know more about certain parts of blender than andrew, which makes me think his role should, in my opinion, be more limited to the gfx design of some of the ui elements like the buttons, menus etc. and not be directly involved with the more technical sides of dev. which by his own admission he isn't very technical.