State of Tech Industry

I'd like to follow up on my last post, where we looked at a specific segment of code libraries and the negative effect it has on the coding industry as a whole.  Anyone who's dealt with a bad interface or incoherent errors can tell that we programmers aren't perfect.  I like to go to Larry Niven when this topic comes up

That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they really hate is lousy programmers.

There's an almost unlimited supply of lousy programmers.  Most managers don't want to hire lousy workers.   So where's the disconnect?  What's wrong?

Despite decades of research and understanding, programming is still hard.  Heck, understanding programmers is still hard.  Thus, a lot of companies that want programming done don't hire their own programmers.  Instead, they outsource to another company.  Any hacker can tell you that good code takes effort.

A lot of outsourcers are actually quite good.  However, there are far too many out there where the only goal is profit.  Managers who don't understand programming only see the same end product (a pile 'o code) but cheaper.  Back in reality, we see a huge discrepancy in quality of code.

One would think that companies would catch on and start hiring firms that create quality code.  Sadly, this isn't the case.