This topic keeps coming around and it always makes me wonder why people have such a hard time hiring good programmers. I say because the best places I've worke

This topic keeps coming around and it always makes me wonder why people have such a hard time hiring good programmers. I say because the best places I've worked at already have a "system" in place for their front-end people. You can still be a marginal developer and do well if you follow the system. It takes a few months, but once you know how they write their code and the standards they use, it's pretty easy to write sustainable, reusable code. This also makes it considerable easier to think and work outside the box. You can take a few of the better programmers, tell them about a new framework or approach you want to use on a project and let them loose. If it's a success, you merge these new ideas into the existing ecosystem. Simply repeat as necessary. The industry really puts a lot of hard work into finding and hiring good candidates, but it's not the programmers who are important. It's the system you're plugging them into which matters.