There are only 5,000 elite software engineers in the world(jaredpalmer.com)
4 pointsby ilreb5 hours ago2 comments
  • proc04 hours ago
    > The other 27 million people aren't doing nothing. They're the ones who take what the 5,000 build and turn it into products

    This is just the software industry's fault. More engineers could be elite, maybe not in their first 10 years of their career, but what companies do is cut that short and push engineers away from the technical work, even after a few years. My guess is that the elite engineers had the opportunity to invest in their technical knowledge from childhood.

    • yolp54 hours ago
      > maybe not in their first 10 years of their career, but what companies do is cut that short and push engineers away from the technical work

      Perhaps the issue is that there just isn't that much technical work to go around.

      While software was booming I remember hearing stories from EEs who found the opportunities in that field lacking. My understanding is that a lot of the people didn't do much technical or engineering work, but those who remained in the field became "BOM spreadsheet babysitters" and "Guy who's only here because we need a licensed engineer to sign off". It really pushed my away from that field even those there are many domains within it that greatly interest me. My understanding is that a lot of the hands on or technical engineering positions went to Asia along with the manufacturing

      • proc0an hour ago
        Yeah that could be the case. In my experience companies slice their software products in tiny slices and give a tiny slice to engineers, which is technically easy. Then after a few years there is real pressure to move away from doing hands-on technical work and just manage your own team of engineers with their tiny slices.

        Instead of doing that, companies could structure to have less engineers with more technical work, and letting them specialize over many years. But part of the incentive is not wanting any one engineer to have too much knowledge in efforts to make them replaceable. It's an unfortunate side effect of how companies optimize things, and the consumer has no way to know or select this at the market level.

    • conartist64 hours ago
      ...and by the way AI isn't any of the 5000!

      I think you're right that many more people are in theory capable of joining the group, but not that the industry is conspiring to keep it small. If anything it's the people who have an academic history that stretches back to childhood that end up dependent on having someone to guide and grade them. Beating your own path through the wild is scary, uncertain, and often thankless, so I think you'd only want to do it if you already felt sure you were among the most motivated and dedicated members of a group.

      • proc0an hour ago
        Well, the industry is rewarding people who had the privilege to invest their childhood into one singular focus. By the time they graduate they are way above everyone else and so they can both do management and leadership while still having elite level technical skills. Most people start working on their skills in university, so I think we would see more elite engineers if companies just let them specialize over a long time, and structure the companies to allow this. Instead companies structure companies to replace engineers easily, and so the person with pre-existing technical knowledge has a huge advantage.
  • ungreased06754 hours ago
    Another possibility: Elite software developers are never unemployed and will rarely or never surface in a resume pile. Mediocre to bad developers will be looking for new jobs fairly often.
    • bdangubic2 hours ago
      this is for part of it. I have been SWE for almost 30 years now and do not have a resume. I interviewed for a ton of positions when I graduated from Uni, got my first job and subsequently never looked for a job again.

      I think more of an issue here is that there is just way too many SWEs and we can’t all be “elite.” In my 30 years in I have worked with roughly same percentage of “elite” as the post is alluding to. The history/structure of just about every project I worked on boils down to needing two distinct group of SWEs, the inovators and closers. The inovators are the “elite” (within the project) and they figure all the shit out. The closers crank it out once all the shit is figured out for them