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Two observations:

- The worst programmers work for big corporations. Because there the overall level of competence is so low they can scrape by barely doing anything.

- Very true about keeping skills sharp and developing new skills. It's hard to do and hard to keep up but always worth it.

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MORE programmers work for big companies, so you get a full normal distribution, and I would imagine there's a bias toward interviewing more of the ones who got fired or poor performance reviews. You only see the tail.

The worst programmers also work for small companies, because it's easy be a big fish in a small pond, etc.

Or maybe there are varied workers at various levels in various organizations. No simple rule satisfies.

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