Celebrities will almost never work alone. They will have PAs, body guards, drivers, etc who all work full time for them. Even the minor celebrities will have agents who work for them - albeit not exclusively. But someone on the scale of the Rock definitely wouldn't be operating his business alone.
He (alone?) does the actual "work" that brings in the bread. The other people could be considered contractors. I mean, a single SaaS app developer still doens't "work alone" when you consider that she might be buying services like hosting and/or payment processing.
It's hard to really find the line between alone and not.
I don't really agree with that logic because you could then argue that anyone working for a company who isn't a developer (eg the finance department, sales team, customer support team and even upper management) aren't part of the company either.
To further blur things, in my examples for a celebrity, agents still contribute to bringing in the actual work yet (as you defined) yet they literally are an external service one would pay for. And what about the script writing? Directors, studio editors, cameramen and sound technicians? They are all creating the product too - without which The Rock wouldn't be in business.
I think if there is one thing we can agree on, it's that even the most fiercely independent of people still depend on the work of others. Nobody can work entirely in isolation. Or at least without themselves living in isolation. But that's really more a philosophical tangent rather than an answer to the question originally posted to HN :)
the metric I'd use is whether one party is fungible. I argue that you can't replace the rock and still get the same product/show. but you can replace the agents and finance team etc.
TV shows and movie franchises often replace cast. Sometimes with the new actor / actress playing an existing character.
* Sometimes it's done out of necessity so the changes are glossed over (Dumbledore changed characters due to Richard Harris sadly passing away, or when actors/actresses get fired from soap operas),
* sometimes it's made a feature (eg Doctor Who regenerations)
* and sometimes they'll just introduce a new leading character to replace the old one (eg the crime comedy "Death in Paradise" which has had 3 different leading inspectors as the previous actors have left the show).
Few people, if indeed anyone, are irreplaceable in their careers.
