Interesting post from Joel for today, January 27, 2005 on the notion that companies are hiring the top1% of available developers as they claim to be doing. Excerpts:
I hear this from almost every software company. "We hire the top 1% or less," they all say.
Could they all be hiring the top 1%? Where are all the other 99%? General Motors?
The top 0.5% usually have jobs. They have jobs where they do very well, so their employers pay them lots of money and do whatever it takes to keep them happy.
In fact, one thing I have noticed is that the people who I consider to be good software developers barely ever apply for jobs at all...They only ever applied for one or two jobs in their lives. [Joel lists a few well known developers] If any of them wants a job they'll pick the job they want, talk to someone, and that person will know who they are and they'll get the job. There's no emailed resume involved.
On the other hand there are people out there who appear to be applying to every job on Monster.com. I'm not kidding. They spam their resume to hundreds or thousands of employers.