Jeff Dean would be exactly who I am talking about. I don't know how you managed to _not_ know who he is. He along with Sanjay Ghemawaty pretty much took google from a research project to the Juggernaut we know about today. he has no blog that I can find no GitHub account and yet most people who work in the field of data processing should know who he is. He has numerous published research papers and has given talks about his work at Google. Someone of his caliber can not stay hidden. Thats the definition of a "Master" at their trade, if your really _that_ good at what you do you can not stay in the shadows people will search you out. This idea that there are a majority of people like Jeff who no one knows about is silly. they may not get profiles in the new york times, but anyone who want to do what they do will know who they are.
When you are considering hiring you don't want to hire the already famous Jeff Dean, you want to hire the 25-year-old that will become Jeff Dean. This person is not in the limelight, and not everyone knows their name. I mean, you want to hire Jeff Dean too, but you'd be happy to find all the 85% as smart as Jeff Dean people out there who will never be famous based solely on their work and without self-promotion.
I would but that 25 year old is not a "Master" as this article represents. I know the context of the discussion on this thread has shifted form the content of the article, and in the context of trying to hire talent yes there are a lot of talented people who are in the shadows, but my argument is they are not the true masters and innovators of our craft.
Also how can you not know who made Amazon Dynamo they published a research paper on it.(http://www.allthingsdistributed.com/files/amazon-dynamo-sosp...)