Many studies have shown programmers differ in productivity, from worst to best, by much more than a factor of ten. From this I long ago concluded the best policy is to pay your good programmers very well but regularly fire the poorer ones—if you can get away with it! One way is, of course, to hire them on contract rather than as regularly employed people, but that is increasingly against the law, which seems to want to guarantee even the worst have some employment. In practice you may actually be better off to pay the worst to stay home and not get in the way of the more capable (and I am
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