Programmers have no power over the people who set pay rates while CEOs have a great deal of power.

Being in management gives you leverage. Being in a union gives you leverage. Being a replaceable widget -- even a gold-plated widget that is x10 better than the other widgets -- gives you no leverage.

I hope I've cleared things up for you. Now go out, throw away any Ayn Rand books that you own, and download something by Machiavelli. You'll learn a lot more about the way that capitalism really works.

When a company hires a CEO, they usually decide who they want first, and then they negotiate over price. There are few substitutes for their choice - usually, a company will find only a handful of candidates that are suitable for the position. This gives the CEO enormous leverage. There's only one of them, yet there are probably a couple companies that want to have them as CEO, so the price goes up.

Similarly, brand-name actors can drive moviegoers to theaters just by their name alone. There is only one Brad Pitt, but there are several movies that would love to have Brad Pitt star in them. Dakota Fanning gets like $4M/movie, because her name alone ensures the movie would get more attention than it otherwise would. David Beckham got a $250M contract, even though he's kinda washed up, because his reputation means people will watch.

An average programmer is filling a role, however. If they ask for too much money, the company just goes out and gets a different programmer. At hiring time, they don't know who'll be 10x more productive, unless that programmer already has a strong brand behind them.

I'm very curious to know how much "brand name" programmers like Peter Norvig or Guido van Rossum get paid. There are many Python programmers, but there is only one Guido, and many places that want him. I'm guessing I'll never find out, though.

BTW, this is behind a lot of the career advice that Internet celebrities give. Seth Godin's "you should throw away your resume" really means "your personal brand should be strong enough that employers want you and aren't just filling a position." Paul Graham's "work hard at things that excite you" is because if you do so, people will notice (eventually), and then they'll want you for what you've done and not just any old programmer. Marc Andreesen says "set the controls for the heart of sun" because that's the work that people notice, and that'll make you stand out from the crowd.

Actually they do: they can turn down an offer to work at any existing company and start their own instead. And many do. (That's how capitalism really works.)

What I'm curious about is that I thought the purpose of VC was not just to stay in business, but to grow fast. I'm pretty sure PG said in a previous essay or comment that if you skip out on VC and someone else takes it you can get overtaken or not be able to catch up to the market leader.

A. Agile methods are just common sense.

B. My company has no common sense, so it treats the agile methods as some sort of religion, and thereby remains completely dysfunctional.

C. I am in hell and need something to shout at. If I shout at my coworkers I will get fired. But there is a consultant within shouting distance.

D. My life sucks and it's all the fault of the Agile Methodologists!

If anyone ever wonders why management consultants charge all that money: This is it. Would you want to walk into this guy's company and try to give advice? You'd have to be awfully well paid!

The author is on the path to enlightenment, but he is not yet there. He's figured out that the capital-M Methodology is primarily designed for broken companies. [1] He's well on his way to figuring out that he's working in a broken company himself, which is why there are so many people employing Methodology there. What he hasn't figured out is that you can't fix a broken company by walking up to people and telling them "you aren't writing documentation or using the bug tracker because you aren't a very talented coder and you have no common sense". I have seen this management style tried, and it doesn't work: it just makes everyone unhappier, and it focuses their unhappiness on you.

If you want to tinker with a dysfunctional company instead of just running for the hills, you need to (a) recruit allies, (b) equip your allies with powerful Jedi mind tricks that they can use on their less-enlightened management, and (c) find ways to maneuver problematic people out of the way of your allies -- or, if necessary, destroy them. This is why there is always a Methodology lying around -- and why, when one dies, another is always there to take its place. A Methodology is a rhetorical weapon, designed for just these purposes.

(a) It's not an accident that Methodologies evolve cultlike features. So does every effort to recruit a bunch of people to a cause, whether it's a fraternity, a political movement, a school of software development, a message board for hackers, or, you know, an actual cult. "Join me and we will fix the company."

(b) The Methodology eventually evolves expensive consultants in suits, and industry-standard buzzwords and rituals whose magical powers are strong and unquestioned. This is important. If your buzzwords aren't magic, nobody will listen to you unless they have common sense, which is very unreliable. Remember when Java was on the uptake, and you couldn't sell anything to a corporation unless it somehow involved J2EE? "Don't worry, Higher Management. We are not merely employing our own native talent and common sense. We are using an Accepted Methodology as endorsed by Higher Powers. You don't need to see our identification; these aren't the droids you're looking for."

(c) I have never heard of a "Scrum Manager" before, and I agree that he or she has a very silly name, but I think I already know what this person is for. This person is there to provide a second manager that is empowered to talk back to the first one, who may well be clueless (at least part of the time). The original poster actually understands this. He just doesn't accept it. He has yet to accept that occasionally-clueless managers, let alone permanently clueless managers, are a fact of life. He seems to think that you can somehow avoid having clueless managers, or fix them by appealing to their common sense. [2] Give him time. Someday he will stop bemoaning the needless existence of powerful weapons and start learning how to use them. "Mister Manager, sir, if you don't stop insisting on screwing up our work I'm going to have our Scrum Manager report you to the Methodology Police."

Unfortunately, like Harry Potter's magic or the Force, Methodology is just a tool. The fact that people are using it all the time, brandishing its most powerful aspects in broad daylight, doesn't mean that things are going well or that the forces of good are necessarily going to win out. Quite the opposite, really. Someone whose projects are well-managed will appear to be living a comfortable, slightly boring life in his home in the swamp, and will rarely be heard employing a Methodology out loud.

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[1] As opposed to garden-variety methodology, which is fine and -- for the talented -- is just "common sense".

[2] Those of us without nominal managers -- startup co-founders and independent consultants -- shouldn't feel too smug here. Clueless customers and clueless clients can be every bit as problematic as clueless managers.

NetCompetition.org is a pro-competition Internet forum funded by broadband companies.

Dave has been through a fair few cycles (remember, he was professionally developing software in 1979!) and regardless of some of his other views, I think his analysis is going to be some of the most accurate you'll see in the software / tech industry on this topic.