Sturgeon's law suggests it applies to all fields. I suspect why we're very aware of it in programming, is that it's the only field off the top of my head where pay isn't disparate in kind. Yes, I suspect they are gifted, the way top athletes are gifted.

rick gregory: clearly, I agree with the thrust of your comment. When I've worked in large companies, it always seemed like the "behind-closed-doors" nature of career development was more a hamper than a help. Maybe that's just in the software work, but it seems like transparency is the better way, if perhaps more socially painful.

Koranteng: long time no see, buddy! I'll have to check that paper out. Is it for reals, or a joke? From the abstract: I wonder if programs/computers that procrastinate are "effective."

Bill: I'm glad you liked the post so much. I can't help, though, but say that the real idea started with Anne. There's a good point about the 10-1 productivity thing. I've always wondered if that's particular to coding or if that applies to all fields. Also, is luck involved? Or maybe manufactured productivity, e.g., those 10-1 coders built the system, thus understand it all, and thus can be much more productive. Or, are they just "gifted"?

Is the meta-problem the old one that we don't know how to measure the productivity of programmers?

"as The Boss, which would you rather have?"

Write about the 2 kinds of bosses, the majority of which are the ones that want predictable outcomes. They'll go for busy workers, since busy workers prevent certain kinds of failure at the expense of failing to achieve certain things. Risk v. Reward.

The one hole in this brilliant post is explaining the anectodal 10-1 productivity gap in top programmers – I'm not sure they fit into the bursty model (the handful I've been lucky to meet are consistently top notch).

The counter to that is to say the Bell curve wins out – that there must be programmers out there who are fantastically unproductive and are costing their organisation many multiples of salary. They are probably as poorly identified as the rock stars.

This is a brilliant post Cote'! Is providing advice into hiring part of Redmonk's thing? I think you should keep refining it until it becomes whitepaper material for all sorts of bosses – strategic guidance for a planet!

This paper presents scheduling algorithms for procrastinators, where the speed that a procrastinator executes a job increases as the due date approaches. We give optimal off-line scheduling policies for linearly increasing speed functions….

The problem is that we've gotten away from the idea that employment is an economic transaction. I'm trading my time, talent and effort for some compensation. If I exceed that value I'm likely gunning for a promotion… I'm investing some extra time and effort in the hope of a future payoff. But companies have gotten away from seeing the employer-employee relationship as an economic one where each part gives the other equal value… they now expect that they can google us and judge what we do on the weekends, affect whether we can blog or not (even if the blog has nothing to do with the compnay or profession) and, damn it, we'd better check email on the weekend and vacation and have the cell with us.