Having a developer shortage doesn't only mean that it's difficult to hire developers. It means that to hire developers, you must hire them away from their curre

Having a developer shortage doesn't only mean that it's difficult to hire developers. It means that to hire developers, you must hire them away from their current employer. There is no pool of unemployed software developers to hire out of, so if you're launching a startup or expanding your team then your only option is to entice a developer away from their existing job. Some observers are confused by the very large population of non-developers who apply for development jobs. These people do not know how to write software[1], and so should not be counted as developers for the purposes of this discussion any more than someone who can't use a multimeter would be called an electrician. One of the earliest blog posts I remember about this phenomena is from Joel Spolsky circa 2005[2], in which he observes that the top 0.5% of applicants is likely to include 99% of the applicants who are developers. [1] FizzBuzz is still the gold standard "can write software" test. [2] http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2005/01/27.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2005/01/27.html