[JumpCrisscross]

"Everyone has the potential to be productive or unproductive. There aren’t people who are A players and C players. Just people who are performing at an A level and at a C level."

But some people will go from 0 to A faster and with less assistance than others within the scope of a specific set of tasks for which they have innate talent or relateable experience.

Further, if the skill set demanded is fungible it is cheaper to buy talent than build it in-house. Firing a C to hire an A is better business than hiring a C and expending time and energy to increase the probability of them converting to an A at some unknown point in the future provided that there is a ready supply of As (or Bs) on the market. With regards to entry and mid-level programming positions, that appears to be the case.

[mattgreenrocks]

Unfortunately, it's difficult to evaluate the quality of the work that you will undertake as a developer from the outside. This leads to tons of employers with C-quality work clamoring for A-quality individuals when they could find a B-quality candidate much easier.

How much of 'business' is predicated on this zero-sum mentality? It's all very tiring. You don't need the best; you just need good enough.

[JumpCrisscross]

"How much of 'business' is predicated on this zero-sum mentality?"

This is a problem of asymmetric information, i.e. employees generally knowing themselves better than prospective employers, and wide uncertainty bands around the evaluation of prospective employees. A rational employer retains a C over replacing them with an expected B who might be an A or an F.