Interesting thesis. There's certainly a glut of minimally competent developers, many of whom end up at companies for whom software is an incidental concern and

Interesting thesis. There's certainly a glut of minimally competent developers, many of whom end up at companies for whom software is an incidental concern and therefore lack sophisticated hiring practices. But many of the top 5% are hired by software companies who depend on innovation for survival and seem to recognize the distinction between the CommodityJavaDeveloper and the PolyglotScientistEngineer (or whatever you want to call the other end of the spectrum). Either these companies will resist the pressure exerted by that ocean of lightly-trained 9-5 programmers or they will lose their edge and fail. And aren't those companies where we want to work anyway? NOTE: I don't mean to disparage those who happen to work 9-5. Rather, I'm suggesting that the best programmers don't cease to be such when they go home at the end of the day.