As someone that has been involved in hiring processes in a South American country. I can say that the "myth" does hold truth. For each position I tend to filte

As someone that has been involved in hiring processes in a South American country. I can say that the "myth" does hold truth. For each position I tend to filter 100 people just to have a couple of real candidates. The real candidates weren't spectacular but they could get the job done in a reasonable time frame. Once in a while there were a person who can get the job done with less supervision, better quality and faster. Usually that person could build systems within the software. Something like : http://xkcd.com/974/ http://xkcd.com/974/ That person is the one that gives some gas to the "myth". A good developer that is probably at the %90 percentile. The problem with people in denial is that they have an strong bias when (s)he compares with their coworkers (who probably are just smart or smarter). Forgetting that for each coworker there were a lot of developers that applied and couldn't solve a fizzbuzz. If the myth weren't truth I don't think there would be so many people failing the fizzbuzz test: http://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/ http://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/ You could argue that those people are not developers but the truth is, they are often graduated from college and somehow manage to get hired in some place.