This is utter bullshit strawman trolling hyperbole. I remember reading Joel's post alluding to this back in the day, then Jeff's a couple of years ago Hmmm. T

This is utter bullshit strawman trolling hyperbole. I remember reading Joel's post alluding to this back in the day, then Jeff's a couple of years ago Hmmm. The Raganwald post that Jeff's is based on says this at the top: If you think that I just claimed that 199 out of 200 working programmers cannot code, stop immediately and either read my follow-up explaining the math, or read Joel’s article on why companies aren’t as picky as they think they are. Thank you. Wait, so what did Joel's post say back in the day? That means, in this horribly simplified universe, that the entire world could consist of 1,000,000 programmers, of whom the worst 199 keep applying for every job and never getting them, but the best 999,801 always get jobs as soon as they apply for one. So every time a job is listed the 199 losers apply, as usual, and one guy from the pool of 999,801 applies, and he gets the job, of course, because he's the best, and now, in this contrived example, every employer thinks they're getting the top 0.5% when they're actually getting the top 99.9801%. Ok, let's see how low you can go in your quest for faux controversy: One question immediately springs to mind: Is that x out of y applicants, or x out of y working developers? There is a massive distinction. O RLY? All of a sudden the headline is: X out of Y Applicants for Positions Advertised By My Company Can't Program. That's a whole lot less impressive/sensational and whole lot closer to reality. Actually, Joel's impressive/sensational headline was: News. I think you might be projecting.