<story><title>Super-star programmers</title><url>http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2012/06/super-star-programmers?fsrc=gn_ep</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>drharris</author><text>Forgive potential ignorance here, but people often quote Joel Spolsky as saying things like: &quot;...the trouble with using a lot of mediocre programmers instead of a couple of good ones is that no matter how long they strive, they will still produce something mediocre.&quot;&lt;p&gt;What really genius-level things has Fog Creek done? I remember demoing FogBugz, and it was marginally better than its competitors, but it was far from a complete game-changer. Trello is ok, but it&apos;s only marginally better than a whiteboard with post-it notes. None of these reinvent an industry, or provide something so outstanding that people rush toward it.&lt;p&gt;Don&apos;t get me wrong; I think Joel has a lot of good ideas in general, and Stack Exchange is indeed a game-changer. But as someone who continually talks about hiring &quot;rock star programmers&quot;, I simply don&apos;t see a result that I&apos;d consider &quot;rock star&quot; equivalent. But, maybe I&apos;m missing something?&lt;p&gt;Edit: More than that, I don&apos;t even consider myself a rock star developer, just a normal developer who loves learning new things and getting a lot of stuff done. I&apos;d be thrilled to work for a Google or Microsoft, but what would attract &quot;rock star developers&quot; to Fog Creek? Basically, are fancy chairs enough? Isn&apos;t the most attractive thing a super interesting problem domain?</text></comment>
<story><title>Super-star programmers</title><url>http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2012/06/super-star-programmers?fsrc=gn_ep</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>forgotAgain</author><text>As I reached about half way through the article I got bored and my mind starting having stray thoughts&lt;p&gt;- god this is long. Isn&apos;t it ironic that a superstar programmer would have been bored by now and stopped reading.&lt;p&gt;- momentarily after that, I guess I just admitted that I&apos;m not s superstar programmer.&lt;p&gt;- momentarily after that, I wonder if there are writers who can transmit ten times as much information using one tenth of the words.&lt;p&gt;- just now, I imagine magazines don&apos;t want superstar writers. That would diminish the amount of ad space they could sell.</text></comment>