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Comment by prepend | Hacker News Reader

I’ve never met a good programmer who didn’t always have a trail of unsolicited job offers following them.

Obviously there are many situations, but I think many people can be selective about where they work.

And what does that mean for the largest group in the bell curve: the medium skilled programmer, who does ok but nonmagical work? Not everyone has the ability to be one or two standard deviations above the median.

Trust me they are being pursued by recruiters too

Because recruiters can't tell the difference.

I've been pursued 10X more by recruiters ever since I've had Google on my resume. That they can tell, and I'll say that Google did a pretty good job of interviewing back in 2014.

I’m not convinced software engineering “skill” actually follows a normal distribution. People tend to have a huge impact, either positive or negative.

Skill does not necessarily manifest as impact. Someone having positive impact in one org will have negative impact in the same role on another.

You don't meet those good programmers because they are bad at networking. You are much more likely to meet the ones that are good at networking.

I’d like to think I’m a good programmer and it takes me months to find a job. You’ll likely never meet me because I don’t go to conferences, I don’t network, and I don’t hang out with other programmers. (HN is one of two exceptions to that.)

Most people know me from furry events or furry writer Telegram groups. :)

"I don’t go to conferences, I don’t network"

I think this highlights a distinction between "the career engineer" and "the expert engineer". The former treats their career as a profession (invests in progression) while the latter masters their craft.

Skill alone does not dictate trajectory; the career engineer intentionally charts their course forward.

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