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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 1, 2025

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located in North America", "speaks and writes excellent native English"

the first one is a non-factor in a global economy. Second one is less and less important as time moves forward, most everyone with an ounce of ambition studies english at one point or another and as American culture permeates your own, english becomes more common, and lets be honest here, the "excellent" qualifier is only important/needed/required if your career involves your language skills.

That just leaves "formal degree" "competent but not great programmer in languages X,Y,Z" in your diagram. With something like programming, formal degrees are less important than in other disciplines, for sure is a requirement for the code monkeys in the IT room, but for the rock stars? I would think projects done and repositories would be the deciding factor which leaves only "competent but not great programmer in languages X,Y,Z" on your upper level as relevant.

Now, you can add an arbitrary qualifiers and make yourself the best in the world in a artificial niche of "Northamerican with excellent english with a degree who is compentent in X,Y,Z language; with deep knowledge of areas X,Y,Z that are not typically things that programmers are into and experience solving problems in these domains with code etc, etc." but at the end of the day the only important thing (at least for a programmer in this example) would be the proficiency in the language and ability to parse tasks in it. Everything else isn't needed to be considered the best in the world programmer.

If we went with your logic "Best in the world" would be a useless category. Usain Bolt? nah I'm the fastest 15 year old chinese-canadian yiddish knowing conservative bald person in the world. Of course it's not as hard as it sounds that way; the normal way, the way most people associate with the term and most companies appreciate and would pay big bucks for is another story.

I would think projects done and repositories would be the deciding factor which leaves only "competent but not great programmer in languages X,Y,Z" on your upper level as relevant.

You would think wrong -- indeed you would be missing the entire point. None of the first few circles in the Venn diagram are all that important at all (as you point out, although you are quite mistaken about location/fluency not mattering) -- the important things are the "not typical programmer things". (ie. the opposite of what you will find in the code monkey room) Degrees are helpful here, or hands-on experience, depending on the specific nature of the thing -- but these are concrete skills, not identity groups.

Companies will not pay big bucks for being a bald chinese canadian -- they will however pay big bucks for somebody who writes acceptable code and already knows everything about their particular business niche. Because there are a lot of niches, and not many programmers who even realize that there's more to their job than "proficiency in the language and ability to parse tasks."

you are quite mistaken about location/fluency not mattering)

for best in the world, yeah I don't think those matter, there are Indians barely understandable in english employed in language critical roles right now.

Companies will not pay big bucks for being a bald chinese canadian -- they will however pay big bucks for somebody who writes acceptable code and already knows everything about their particular business niche. Because there are a lot of niches, and not many programmers who even realize that there's more to their job than "proficiency in the language and ability to parse tasks."

While this may be true in some circumstances, that doesn't mean that programmer is the best in the world in the metrics normally asociated with the moniker of "best in the world" regardless of how much he earns. They would be seen more as adequately skilled with some aditional skills, not "best in the world".