Developer hiring and the market for lemons
I think nobody's done more damage to the developer hiring market than Joel Spolsky.  His inductions about the liquidity of "great developers" seem to have become true mostly because he was the only one writing about it in the 90's.<p>But a lot of it is anecdote and faulty assumptions.  I don't know of many other professions that have 8 hour oral exams that test the sum of all knowledge in the field with such a strong negative bias towards hiring.  Or a profession that so strongly assumes ability is innate and cannot be trained.<p>It's outrageous.