<story><title>The Access Economy: Why the Normal Distribution Is Vanishing (2015)</title><url>https://alexdanco.com/2015/12/17/taylor-swift-ios-and-the-access-economy-why-the-normal-distribution-is-vanishing/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>onlyrealcuzzo</author><text>Software engineers follow for the same reason as footballers or doctors.&lt;p&gt;In football, there&amp;#x27;s only a market for the best. Nobody likes a loser.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s the same in health. There&amp;#x27;s no market for mediocre or bad doctors.&lt;p&gt;Similarly, there&amp;#x27;s not really a market for software that doesn&amp;#x27;t work. Writing novel software that solves real problems isn&amp;#x27;t yet trivial. So there&amp;#x27;s not a huge market for bad software engineers. And there isn&amp;#x27;t yet a big enough supply of good ones to meet demand.&lt;p&gt;See why Google doesn&amp;#x27;t just lower their bar to hire more candidates. It wouldn&amp;#x27;t do them any good.</text></item><item><author>pjc50</author><text>Tournament wages theory: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Tournament_theory&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Tournament_theory&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;This seems to happen whenever there&amp;#x27;s (a) direct competition (b) the value provided by the winner is very scalable (media, sports, software) and (c) most importantly, it can&amp;#x27;t be substituted by splitting the job among more people.&lt;p&gt;So footballers follow this model because you can only have 11 people on the pitch - there&amp;#x27;s no amount of low-wage non-first-worlders you can replace Ronaldo with. Megastars follow this model; if you want to see Taylor Swift, that doesn&amp;#x27;t substitute cleanly with Ariana Grande or your local bar band.&lt;p&gt;And software engineers follow this to some extent because splitting problems up is in itself the difficult bit.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>throwawaymath</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt; Similarly, there&amp;#x27;s not really a market for software that doesn&amp;#x27;t work.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Not sure you and I are in the same market, friend.&lt;p&gt;Engineers and doctors are highly commoditized compared to professional athletes and celebrity entertainers. We produce a fundamentally fungible good.&lt;p&gt;If you can pay the market rate, you can find a replacement engineer to work your software. If Taylor Swift&amp;#x27;s concert is sold out, you cannot see Taylor Swift. If Aaron Rodgers dies, there are how many quarterbacks in the world capable of replacing him?&lt;p&gt;These are categorically different things with categorically different market dynamics. Approximately no software engineers (or doctors) have a personal brand, nor an &lt;i&gt;objectively&lt;/i&gt; superior skillset.</text></comment>
<story><title>The Access Economy: Why the Normal Distribution Is Vanishing (2015)</title><url>https://alexdanco.com/2015/12/17/taylor-swift-ios-and-the-access-economy-why-the-normal-distribution-is-vanishing/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>onlyrealcuzzo</author><text>Software engineers follow for the same reason as footballers or doctors.&lt;p&gt;In football, there&amp;#x27;s only a market for the best. Nobody likes a loser.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s the same in health. There&amp;#x27;s no market for mediocre or bad doctors.&lt;p&gt;Similarly, there&amp;#x27;s not really a market for software that doesn&amp;#x27;t work. Writing novel software that solves real problems isn&amp;#x27;t yet trivial. So there&amp;#x27;s not a huge market for bad software engineers. And there isn&amp;#x27;t yet a big enough supply of good ones to meet demand.&lt;p&gt;See why Google doesn&amp;#x27;t just lower their bar to hire more candidates. It wouldn&amp;#x27;t do them any good.</text></item><item><author>pjc50</author><text>Tournament wages theory: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Tournament_theory&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Tournament_theory&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;This seems to happen whenever there&amp;#x27;s (a) direct competition (b) the value provided by the winner is very scalable (media, sports, software) and (c) most importantly, it can&amp;#x27;t be substituted by splitting the job among more people.&lt;p&gt;So footballers follow this model because you can only have 11 people on the pitch - there&amp;#x27;s no amount of low-wage non-first-worlders you can replace Ronaldo with. Megastars follow this model; if you want to see Taylor Swift, that doesn&amp;#x27;t substitute cleanly with Ariana Grande or your local bar band.&lt;p&gt;And software engineers follow this to some extent because splitting problems up is in itself the difficult bit.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pjc50</author><text>Few markets have a market for &amp;quot;bad&amp;quot; employees, surely? What matters in the tournament situation is that the number #2 employee isn&amp;#x27;t as good as the #1 employee, regardless of what absolute quality level we&amp;#x27;re talking about.</text></comment>