From Wages or Shortage, this comment

"""
A-grade engineers are unfortunately similar to Welsh
longbowmen: devastatingly potent compared to their peers, but you
have to start their training at age 10 or so.  Simply upping the
salaries of A-grade engineers won't magically create more of them.
We know this, as we tried exactly that experiment in the boom."
"""

and this comment

"""
... the notion of "best practices" is widely misunderstood in IT. It
is not organizational best practices that most improve the output,
it's best engineering practices. And those are accepted first by the
"rockstar" types and least understood, why, most often resisted, by
the management and subsistence engineers. Where do you think that
10-20x gap comes from, lightning-fast typing skill? ;-)
"""

and this one

"""
... such practices often fall victim to the hero mentality that is
the odious legacy of the dot-com boom. It basically says that for a
tech company to do well, it has to find some rockstars, clear the
decks for them, and sell the gold that trickles out of their
foosball-table equipped office. It fosters a warlike mentality in
the workplace and sacrifices long term growth for short term market
share. It also happily sacrifices a vast middle ground of engineers
who would improve and be profitably productive with a positive
environment and some solid mentoring so it can lavish luxury on the
super-productive who may not, as Dave seems to concede, necessarily
add business value. Contrary to Dave's assertions, I've also seen
good engineers get better in such an environment.
"""

all ring true.

--titus