It has long been known, at least among experienced technologists, that the best people are worth ten times the "just" really good ones. I rarely see numbers to support this contention - which is somewhat surprising for someone as data-hungry and -driven as I - but I have known it since my earliest days in the technology business. The best people are the best because they absorb more, see more, are more creative, and can put these together to grasp the future and deliver results in a way that most others simply cannot.

Which do you hire, developers or engineers? Nowadays, the most popular programming language is JavaScript, or, by its correct name, ECMAScript. Since "Eck-Ma-Script" is not a great marketing name except, perhaps, for a language for Ghostbusters EctoPlasm, it is not surprising that everyone still calls it JavaScript or just "JS". Whether this is a good thing or not, and whether JavaScript is the worst or best language invented, is not a topic I am too interested in.

Two months ago, I posted an article about a United Airlines series of failures that, if not so painful for their paying customers - and their employees too - would be laughable. Yesterday, I had the pleasure of reading an interview with the legendary Gordon Bethune, who turned around Continental Airlines in a single year, from a loss of $600MM in FY1994 to a profit of $225MM in FY1995.