Man, there is a huge swath of programming that doesn't require exceptional talent. Maybe direction from such talent, but how much is needed for maintenance programming, simple web-page creation, me-too clones of existing applications, iOS/Android apps, ...<p>Yeah, if you're going to replace Linux next year, you better have some talent. If you're going to really do self-driving vehicles you better have talent and way more process than what I see used for every website and application I use. But nobody will pay that much money for talent that gets bored.'<p>And I go back to an earlier comment I keep echoing: Why would exceptional talent spent all that time and effort in harvesting data and selling ads?
I disagree with "while you can train people to be competent, you can't train them to be exceptional"<p>That is, you hear firms complain about the difficulty they have hiring people all the time but you rarely hear them talk about what they do once they hire those people.<p>That's because instead of treasuring them like the precious resource they are they burn them out by having them work on broken products with broken tools and broken processes.<p>It strokes managers narcissism to believe that "we hire the best" but if you really believed in the value of management you'd align your products, processes and tools that you can get competent results from competent programmers who aren't working very hard instead of taking perverse satisfaction in having excellent programmers work very hard to barely keep their head above water.