Good Developers Are Hard to Find

Good software developers are hard to find. Why? Because good people in general are hard to find.

A good friend is hard to find. A good stylist is hard to find.

That principle applies everywhere.

I am a happy person. I have found many good people that help me with my small problems - including a good luthier who restrings my Floyd Rose.

But there are many people who struggle with finding one another.

A good spouse is hard to find.

Men and women have been looking for each other for a long time. Finding a mate has always been a huge problem for human beings.

According to divorce statistics, half of marriages end up in a divorce ("half" is a very optimistic figure - it runs up to 90% in some countries).

It means that if you:

1. Have found a person that you think is the best choice you can make,
2. Have all the warm and sweet emotions one can feel towards another person,
3. Have said that out loud in front of other people,
4. And signed a legal document committing yourself to this choice, -

Your common venture has a 50% chance to succeed at best.

And if you have conquered the reality through effort and dedication and increased your chance to one hundred percent, it only means that your neighbor has got it reduced to 25%.

Sorry, man! It's life.

I know several women who work hard to increase my chances. Some of them are on their third marriage already.

I also know many customers who do the same with developers.

They drift from one vendor to another. Most of us, developers, are not very good people, you know. I understand why a customer can run away from a software company with their hair standing up on the back of their neck. Some developers just don't know what they are doing.

But I will never understand why customers can break up with a developer who has been licking up their projects clean for months or years.

With whose help they have grown their business four times.

Who helped them rearchitect the code in a way that allows them to make new changes and maintain the code with ease.

Why would one look for someone else? What are the chances to find someone better?

Well, there should be numbers about that. My company has 50 people and I know only two developers with my experience. If you browsed us on a social network and picked one in a random manner, you would have a 6% chance to pick someone of my caliber.

And my company is better than many companies in the city. With a couple of other companies, the chance would not be higher than 1-2%.

And the city we live in has several Universities that give education to software developers. If you browsed multiple countries, the chance would drop below 1% and become what is called "statistical error".

Imagine that you knew all that. You had that long and dark time in your life when you were drifting from one developer to another. And finally you found one!

What would make you move on from this helper to a new one?

My customer has decided to move on.

Alright then. Good luck with giving the code polished by me to other people.

I hope I will see this code sometime later and recognize it.