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10x is real but I think the more compelling question is how low a bar of competency is allowed to work in the profession - and what is the average level of competency in the programmer market.

"Certifications" doesn't get there - too easy to just game a multiple choice test. I would like to see a formal education + testing requirement (ala Doctors, just not 10 years!) Essentially, a barrier of entry for serious programmers. That would ultimately come with a high minimum salary without having to get hired at faang.

College accreditation doesn't cut it either. I work w programmers with an MS in CS. Programmers are kinda impressed. Managers could care less.

The insanely high demand for labor and (always present) priority to reduce labor costs however encourages the entry of boot-camp you're hired on the low end of experience/competence.




I love it! Artificially constrain the labor supply with licensing. It would be incredibly lucrative for programmers. As a bonus, it would increase the prestige of our profession. Of course it would be a terrible deal for companies and quite bad for the economy.

The fact is that there are many types of applications where a high level of expertise is not needed. Eg. websites for small businesses. The client/end user doesn't care how cleanly architected or efficient or even bug-free the codebase is, and it's a better deal for management to pay some freshly-minted bootcamp grad 50k/yr to hack away than drop 6 times that on a 10xer.




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