[noselasd]

You're missing the point that the term rock-star programmer doesn't mean they will produce world changing programs. It means they'll do an order of magnitude better/faster than their non-rockstar peers.

That might be a bit contradicting to what Joel is explaining. From what I've experienced first hand, there's programmers that can produce similar code/software in a week that takes 5 mediocre programmers to produce in a month. Those are extreme cases though.

There's not enough "rock star programmers" to go around, so not everyone can have a piece of that cake. Much of this is also very domain specific, it's not a given that a "rock star" game programmer is going to be a orders-of-magnitude better at developing business support systems. Finally, this is not that specific to programming. Not everyone's Einstein, Feynman or Michelangelo.

[calinet6]

Can we please stop using the term "rock star?" It's getting old.

This idea that a single programmer is somehow so much better or superior may have its merits, but it's harmful to your overall business if you put all your weight on that single support.

You have to accept that above a certain number, your employees will fall on a bell-curve of ability, and you should support the efficiency and productiveness of the entire system, not depend on a few "rock stars" to drag it up with you.

Here are words I associate with Rock Star: driven (sure), but myopic, single-minded, selfish, unbalanced, and unfaithful. I say we strike it from the vocab.

[noselasd]

I agree completely with that. If you're betting your future on having all your employees being an order of magnitude better than the average, well - you're gambling high.

[MartinCron]

You forgot "drug addicted".

[eli_gottlieb]

And skirt-chasing, and very likely to refer to everyone as "bro" or "braw".

[drharris]

Well, in the linked article he used a Mozart/Salieri analogy, implying that rock star programmers write masterpieces, not simple bug trackers. If all Fog Creek programmers were truly rock stars, wouldn't they be beating Google instead of writing menial money-farm stuff? In my experience, those of us who move at a faster pace than our peers tend to get the most interesting projects. There's a reason that ERP software is so bad, after all.

In the rock star analogy, it'd be like getting the Beatles to write music for Justin Bieber fans, or getting Metallica to switch to the "easy listening" genre. That's not what you do with rock stars.

[sgt101]

The point is that if John Lennon was borne today he (or if Jean, she..) would make great music. You might never hear it because of "the industry" but John, or Jean, would be out there somewhere doing ingenious things with melodies that no one else would have.

You can't stop people like that, the same is true for programming, if it's your thing you'll do it. If not.. you won't, you'll be a session musician, and every tune you hear (or function you see) you will be able to say "I could of written that" but you didn't.