tbenbrahim

Some people think Silicon Valley represents the entire United States, and that software development only happens in Silicon Valley, hence the myopic views and the memes.

if a 40+ developer (who ships product and gets things done rather than a "coder" as you refer to them), works for less than market rate, there is a reason, and usually not a good one. This is not something to base a company on. Most of us are working at well above market rates, not in Silicon Vally (there is serious software in the energy, medical, financial, etc... field being written elsewhere) and are not in the job market.

I have been programming for 30 years. I can look at code that is 10 years old and see how much I have improved in those 10 years. 26 year old code? It was a joke. I thought I knew it all back then, but for about the last 20 years, I have been working with the realization that I know less than 10% about this field. Your statement cannot be true unless you only work in the very limited scope of CRUD apps. Even then, you probably still have a lot to learn about SQL optimization (I know, you use an ORM and do not worry about those pesky details:<) I am continuously amazed by the poor quality or performance of a lot of commercial software, probably borne out of hiring practices that espouse the same belief you do.