Submission timeline
2007–2026One slot for every year since HN launched. Height is that year's peak points; orange marks a 100+ point or 50+ comment breakout. Select a bar to open its strongest thread.
First comments on top threads
HN comment orderIt seems that "great" developer is somewhat a synonym for "public" developer. I'm not sure how companies would just "know" someone is "great" otherwise. And yes, not all publicly known developers are necessarily great (or even good), but I'm not sure how one would recognize a 'great' developer without that person also having some degree of publicness to them. And yet, I've known more than a handful of developers who are really solid, great people to work with, and I'd…
When the topic of "great" developers comes up, I always challenge anyone to define precisely, in quantifiable terms, what a "great developer" is exactly. How do you know someone is a "great developer" if you can't, in tangible terms, say exactly what a "great developer" is? This is even more of an issue when recruiting because recruiting is an assessment process to determine if someone meets some requirement. But just like software testing, if you can't quantify the requirement, then…
This industry spends way too much time thinking about top producers (IE, the mythical 10x developer) and not enough about the support to turn one of those competent but humble developers into a top producer. Are there a few legitimate "The One" developers in the world? Yes, I'm sure there are. But you can take an average player, put them in a super supportive environment with good tools and make them look like a super star way easier than you…
The first top-level comment from each of the four biggest threads, in HN’s own order. Excerpts are shortened; open a comment for full context.
- Breakout years
- 2
- Total points
- 635
- Total comments
- 544
100+ points or 50+ comments
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
Every submission
| Date | Title as submitted | By | Points | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016-10-09 | Developer hiring and the market for lemonsFirst breakout · Best thread | mkeeter | 448 | 378 |
| 2018-02-27 | Developer hiring and the market for lemons | marvinpinto | 3 | 0 |
| 2018-04-13 | Hiring and the market for lemons (2016) | ff_ | 128 | 117 |
| 2019-07-30 | Hiring and the Market for Lemons (2016) | pyb | 2 | 0 |
| 2019-12-12 | Hiring and the Market for Lemons | mooreds | 2 | 0 |
| 2020-06-16 | Hiring and the Market for Lemons (2016)Latest 20+ point return | weinzierl | 52 | 49 |