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Comment by chrischen | Hacker News Reader

So what do B and C developers do? Not everyone can be in the A tier.

Wouldn't a better strategy for society be to focus on extracting maximum value and output from people of all capabilities? Just pay less capable people less, and give them smaller responsibilities.

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So what do B and C developers do?

I suspect the ones at Apple develop iTunes for Windows

It's funny because it's true.

You're implying that what's being discussed is a zero sum problem. We're simply saying that 'A' players work best with 'A' players, and if you fight for that in your organization then you'll do great things. 'B' and 'C' players will still exist, absolutely, but you'd do well to avoid them when possible.

I think theoretically we cannot achieve a state where all players are A. If that happens, our standards would be raised so that there will be a new class of B and C players that used to be A players. The only way for everyone to be A is for everyone to be the same, and in that scenario the classifiers would be meaningless.

This all of course assumes that all humans are created with the same innate potentials, which is definitely not true.

We can encourage everyone to do their best, but you'll get problems if you push people beyond their natural abilities for example by giving a C player the responsibilities and expectations of an A player, which is what I think you're suggesting.

A "B" or "C" player can still be a hard worker, even if she's less capable. I'm not sure why it's necessary to avoid them. Apple still needs janitors, sales people, and other lower salary jobs. I think it applies to their engineering staff as well. Obviously down to a certain level of "C"-ness they probably shouldn't even be an engineer.

That's not what I'm suggesting at all actually. Again, you're implying this is a zero sum game, in which the world has nothing but 'A' players. Thats not what I've said.

Being a 'hard worker' is completely and totally irrelevant in software development. More input does not equal better output, which in software is the key.

I'm suggesting to each his own type of input. So the A players can work on the new iPhone, while the B and C players can do something less important.

I think it depends on what you're trying to achieve. For example if you're trying to pull off the iPhone in one year with 5 guys, it makes sense to spend time finding the best guys.

You can also try to find 15-20 decent guys, but there are benefits to smaller teams — lower communication cost, a potential compounding effect when smart people work together, etc…

> "So what do B and C developers do?"

Strive to be A developers.

Sorry if it sounds too harsh, I personally classify myself as a B developer.

Sure but the reality is that there will always be B and C people, and sorry if it sounds harsh, but some people will never achieve A status. Someone's going to have to give them something productive to do.

I think that was one of the design goals of Java. (seriously)

most companies are based on B and C players, its one of the reasons that a lot of big companies have so many management layers.

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