[rbranson]

The problem is that there are far more average or mediocre developers than there are even decent ones, severely diluting our image. Developers are in such high demand, the good pay has caused millions to enter the field that would otherwise be unfit for a typical engineering or scientific field, just because they feel comfortable after a few sessions of hacking together a LAMP app or getting some watered-down MIS degree. Large corporations victimized by their rigid hiring policies have been inundated with thousands of these droids that expend maximum time to build minimum solutions. Further fueling this fire is a total misunderstanding of the process by upper management, whose day-to-day role in the company couldn't be any more antithetical to that of a software developer.

[mortenjorck]

It's a similar situation for designers, as you can see with some of the recent discussions regarding 99designs. There's good pay at the high end (with a somewhat pronounced falloff), lots of "artsy" kids go into college for it because it's the one art program that promises to actually make them a living, and there's certainly a lot of misunderstanding of the process at the management level.

[Periodic]

I was just wondering if we can extend this to any field. Is it true that every field will have its standouts and then a lot of mediocre members that dilute the image for everyone else?

I think the problem is that the barrier to entry is so low in a lot of technical fields right now because demand is high. Companies are willing to hire a lot of mediocre programmers (or outsource to places of questionable quality) because they simply need something and the cost of failure is not catastrophic.

On the other hand, medicine and law have high barriers to entry, and you would be considered a fool to hire a doctor or lawyer who did not have the appropriate degrees, certifications, and licenses. This is not true with technology these days.

It's like the programming industry doesn't even have a bar to jump over.

[cjeane]

"they couldn’t find anybody and they decided to aim lower." I don't think this ad was being inundated with droids of any sort.

[rbranson]

I am mostly talking about large corporations. It's much easier to determine if a single developer is going to be able to do a short-term gig like this than try to hire an entire department of engineers for a large, long-term project.