Ordering a thousand fanatic janitors to program an optimizing compiler will bear no fruit.

Did you actually think about that for five minutes?

Order your thousand fanatic janitors to study computer programming. Now you've got, say, 990 fanatic janitors begging forgiveness from the Great Leader for their failure, and ten minimally-competent programmers. Programmers continue training, while janitors atone by seeing to the programmers' every material need.

Consider how much time some potential world-changing genius wastes with preparing their own food, shopping for clothes, waiting in line for things, and so on. Given fanatical dedication to a cause, and a staff of less-skilled but equally-dedicated assistants, one of the chosen few could simply say "I want a ham sandwich" and get back to work, knowing that a ham sandwich prepared exactly to their previously-expressed specifications will be presented to them within minutes, without another precious thought allocated to the details of logistics.