[hga]

Good questions. I'm not sure myself, but I suspect the lure of $$$. Someone who's good at playing a sort of game I loathe can prey on companies that don't do good screening and keep a job for as long as a few months and sometimes indefinitely.

Heck, look at how much cargo cult programming goes on at companies from top to bottom. PG pointed out that one of the main reasons for dot.bomb failure was not being able to technically execute (sure, the company may still have been hopeless, but they didn't even get to test their sales proposition).

And a lot if not most companies simply don't focus on technical excellence or even simple competance. E.g. look at how the powers that be at Friendser let it wither on the vine because they assumes the tech was in the bag while their persued big deals, all the while ignoring for years (I think) that the system had gotten so overloaded it was essentially useless.

And, heck, if I had the time to mentor you and you were interested, I might take you on even at your current level. You "know your own limitations" today, but you're still, say, better than 70% plus or minus of the people who call themselves programmers. If you can execute the little stuff, I can teach you the big picture (with the aid of a book or two and some hard work).