Most developers are mediocre, no way around that. And every developer was bad and mediocre before he became better. Companies that don't invest in employees don

Most developers are mediocre, no way around that. And every developer was bad and mediocre before he became better. Companies that don't invest in employees don't really deserve performance anyway. Exception might be start-ups though, developers need to adjust expectations especially around pay. I have seen enough software projects that certainly didn't fail because the devs lacked ability, there was always another reason and mainly that is leadership not knowing about the problem they try to solve. A bit of an exception might be more artistic topics like video games. Here marketing and chance play a larger role than management. Sure, maybe you do cutting edge research, here ability is important again, but that is truly exceptional. That said, I don't think it is hard to get a job currently.