> The highly talented people will do this for fun

No?

People who have time AND enjoy doing this sort of thing in their free time will do this for fun. That’s the self-selection, then from this pool talent hopefully gets translated into results.

Why reduce your pool to “free time and enjoy doing bounties in free time”? That’s excluding many talented people. I’ll also point out that it’s discriminatory: single childless wealthy men tend to have a whole lot more free time (for example women do most of the unpaid care work in all countries, leaving a whole lot less time for this sort of thing).

I also have a suspicion (not based on any data) that people who enjoy doing bounties in their free time certainly tend to be technically talented, but also tend to have non-technical weaknesses around communication and other soft skills. So you’d self select for this weakness too.