Joel Spolsky has a great article explaining that if a company is attempting to build high quality software they have to hire the best programmers and designers.

I’ve always understood that the best programmers or designers are at least one order of magnitude better than good programmers or designers, but Joel’s explanation is better than any other I’ve heard yet. I particularly like his analogy that five average composers will never compose a work of equal quality to a musical genius like Mozart.

This artistic explanation is an easily understood comparison, so why don’t people seem to understand this phenomenon when it comes to software development? Perhaps it is because people who do not create software cannot easily appreciate the complexity or effort necessary to build a software system, let alone a great one. Whereas almost everyone can listen to a piece of music and grasp its complexity.

Not all companies are looking to build the best software, but if yours is, read his article.

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