[Tycho]

I have a pet theory about the apparent shortage of 'experienced engineers' in the midst of high unemployment.

Software development as we know is an inherently unstable activity - it's very hard to gauge how much a project will cost in time and money. Supposedly 50% of IT projects fail and 70% don't meet all their targets (or something catastrophic like that).

Well here's my theory. When you can't tell how much something will cost or even whether it's really possible, when there are no guarantees, the only thing that can comfort you is that your competition wont fair any better. To ensure this, you just need to employ the top programmers/architects. If you have people of the best calibre, you can rest easy, because if they can't deliver, nobody can.

Thus, companies looking to launch risky software ventures need what is by definition a scarce resource (the best developers). Unless the nature of software changes drastically, there will always be a shortage of the 'experienced engineers' necessary to placate the anxiety of this high risk business. Human expertise is finite, the capacity of software projects to fail is infinite.

(particularly if you're talking about launching web apps and new platforms and such... if you just need some simple engineering then not so much)

[ardit33]

um, if you want to build any great products, you need really good people inboard. Average is just not good enough.

I noticed this is the same for sports. I play soccer frequently, and I noticed that in order to win, you really need few good players in the team (way above average). Not everybody has to be really good, but you need few good pl

In a team of 11 you need a great: Goalie Defender 2 Midfielder (one center and one runner on the sides) One great Scorer/Forward

The rest of the team can be OK, (i.e good enough or average), but with good organization this team will excel.

Now think of a startup that instead of being able to field 11 players on the field, they can field only 7-8. Then everybody on the team has to be really good from the get go for it to have a chance.

Once it grows, it can afford more warm bodies. People that can do useful work (fix bugs, create additional features), but that are not able to do groundbreaking work by themselves.