I think people on HN and Twitter absolutely overestimate the global industry median. Just to mention one dimension of it: There are many self-deprecating jokes

I think people on HN and Twitter absolutely overestimate the global industry median. Just to mention one dimension of it: There are many self-deprecating jokes about how 1x programmers use StackOverflow all day. I'd argue that it's actually the opposite: good Google-Fu alone can make you a 10x engineer! Many developers in continental Europe or Asia still struggle with English. They'll get stuck tinkering around for a day when the solution is result #1 on Google.