I believe the number of good software engineers numbers in the thousands. This is completely anecdotal, and I have no studies to back up this claim. The longer

I believe the number of good software engineers numbers in the thousands. This is completely anecdotal, and I have no studies to back up this claim. The longer I've been in industry, the more I've come to believe that the number of good software engineers seems to remain fairly constant over time. I also contend that more than fifty percent of developers are bad, and shouldn't be programming. Given those margins, finding someone who actually is impressive is difficult. Most projects are not that interesting, are rehashes of something that's already been done, or are just poorly designed and executed.