One awful thing about these discussions is the invisible factor: team structure. (Did I miss the part where he addresses it?) - One phenomenon: First Programme

One awful thing about these discussions is the invisible factor: team structure. (Did I miss the part where he addresses it?) - One phenomenon: First Programmer racks up massive technical debt to spew crap out fast. (Which is a valid strategy, but has its tradeoffs.) Next programmers all have lower productivity because they're living in the First Programmer's world. (And the managerial system's set up to reject sufficiently large improvements to the situation.) Mediocre First Programmer becomes a superstar. - Another phenomenon: Contractor who swoops in and gets the closest thing the team has to greenfield projects, while everyone else tends to pull maintenance-type tasks off the backlog. So the Contractor becomes a superstar. - Another phenomenon: managers more likely hire someone who merely LOOKS and SOUNDS like an ideal programmer. Other programmers treat them with more respect too. (I remember a successful programmer who was fooled by an ideal-looking-and-sounding programmer, until they worked in a two-person team. Then he discovered Mr. Ideal simply parroted tech podcasts word-for-word. Just your typical big-mouthed junior programmer dudebro.) Over time, these advantages compound. These programmers get into the right circles, tasks which level up their skills faster, etc.