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Comment by 31reasons | Hacker News Reader

It is not zero-sum ? companies like Google, Facebook pick 1 out of 100 programmers, if there was 10 fold increase in programmers, they would start picking 1 out of 1000. Instead of complaining shortage of programmer it makes sense to build software development processes around "average" programmers rather than insisting on superstar programmers. How many other fields do that ? Have you read an ad about hiring only superstar plumber,pilot,electrician,nurse? Even if its true that your company will benefit from so called 10x programmers why not train people to be 10x or give degrees to people who are only 10x. Just increasing the pool of 1x while insisting on hiring 10x doesn't make sense.

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> Instead of complaining shortage of programmer it makes sense to build software development processes around "average" programmers

I tried to explain this to a manager: instead of trying to find a developer with perfect skills, get a junior one and train him.

There is no shortage of developers, but there is definitely a shortage of senior developers with (quoting one of the emails i get weekly):

5+ years of experience in the following skill sets... Web-Based C# / ASP.NET 3.5 / 4.0 Development – Design / Development / Implementation MVC Design Pattern Object-Relational Mapping (ORM) Framework – Entity Framework WebServices / SOAP / XML WCF – Windows Communication Foundation SQL Server 2005 / 2008 – T-SQL / Database Design Frameworks

> It is not zero-sum

No, it really isn't. Read my article and the linked economic research.

> if there was 10 fold increase in programmers

There has been a 10 fold increase in programmers since 50 years ago, but more than a 10 fold increase in the amount of programming work, so salaries have done just fine. Also, those programmers are already there, in other countries, so artificial barriers can only create so much salary disparity before companies will pursue other options. At that point, why were you bothering trying to keep them out in the first place?

Read the linked article: it is not a zero-sum game.

Angie's List does explicitly that, showing you superstar plumbers, electricians, doctors, etc. If I am given the choice to hire a great plumber vs. an average plumber I would always hire a great plumber if I can afford him. Your argument that development processes should be built around average programmers is like saying open heart surgical procedures should be designed around average surgeons.

I don't know how to read your comment. I, for one, do believe that surgical procedures should be designed for the average surgeon.

You want the procedures to be built around superstars?

If I were building a software company that I wanted to survive and thrive long term, I would definitely try to cater to BOTH the superstar and more average programmers. Both have their place.

I think I might have to specify what I mean by average. I read average as competent. Sure there are software processes that a competent programmer can work with but to say all processes should be designed for just competent programmers,as the commentator suggested, is unreasonable in my opinion. I do see your point though about designing processes around just superstars. That's not viable either.

We humans are greedy species. If given opportunity we would always hire superstar (even janitors or hamburger flippers) especially if they don't cost any extra. If you can find superstar, great! but stop crying "shortage" if you are not in the business of open heart surgery.

EDIT: And yes every average heart surgeon is capable of doing heart surgery otherwise they would not get a degree in the first place. There is no such thing as 10x heart surgeon.

heart surgery is very complex and success depends on a lot of things. How a human body will react to a highly invasive procedure is unknown hence if it reacts in a way that your average surgeon has no idea on how to deal with the patient would die. Have you heard of specialists? Do you know why people go to specialists? Why is there a need of specialists if every average heart surgeon can do heart surgery?

So you see there is something like a 10X heart surgeon, he/she is called a specialist.

There is a difference between a specialist and a 10X person. Specialization indicates a detailed knowledge of specialized subject. It has nothing to do with how creative, intelligent and talented you are in solving problems of your domain. I could be specialized into writing device drivers for Real-time linux systems and yet be average programmer. Specialization has to do with knowledge, 10x indicates fluid intelligence in solving problems.

Then I guess we differed on what 10x meant.

This what generally people think of 10x. The imaginative 10x heart surgeon would do following:(any or all of it)

1. Take 10 times less time performing heart surgery.

2. Could perform successful surgery at 10 times less cost.

3. Invent new ways of doing work of 10 heart surgeons.

4. Survival rate of his/her patients would be 10 times that of other heart surgeons.

5. Could perform heart surgery so complicated that it would generally require 10 heart surgeons during the surgery.

Are you going to find such a heart surgeon ? If so, how many? would entire healthcare system be functional if all hospitals are adamant on just hiring 10x surgeon and at the same time advocating bringing more 1x heart surgeons into the market.

How do you think programmers get from average to great?

Some of it is aptitude, some of it is learning the right things from experience and some of it is attitude.

Having average programmers is possible, but it does two things. Features are added more slowely (sometimes half the rate) and management/architectural overhead has to be much higher as well. Personally I wish that I was working with better devs even if I would appear less exceptional; just so that I could learn a lot more from them and would have to do less refactoring of their existing code

We don't require surgeons or airline pilots or bridge-designing civil engineers to be rock stars. Exactly why do people think you need a rock star programmer to build, I dunno, eBay for cats or whatever is the latest stupid VC fashion?

Lot of startups are just looking for superstar programmers because they want to get the most out of their limited funding. But without proper product-market fit its even counter productive. Superstar programmer is like a sports car, he/she will take you 10x faster in the wrong direction if your direction is wrong.

Even if you only run eBay for cats, you probably secretly believe you can become the equivalent of Facebook in your particular space, and feel that what you need is a room full of the eBay for cats version of Mark Zuckerberg, making the billion dollar magic happen on the cheap.

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