It's hard to say this without sounding insulting or belittling, but I'm genuinely curious... What are your credentials? You don't have to justify yourself to some random guy on the internet (me), but a few of your comments mention you're in the "1 in a 100" category, so I'm wondering what you've done that would be so valuable to Yahoo. Is it that you're a talented engineer or more?
I probably sound like a complete dick but I'm being sincere. I often wonder where on the scale I sit (e.g. 10 in 100?), and whether I'm undervaluing myself or my talents, or even whether I'm overvaluing it? So I'm wondering how/why you arrived at your personal valuation. Hope that's not taken the wrong way.
It's from 0.0 to 3.0, but the majority of professional software engineers are between 1.0 and 2.0. Average is about 1.1-1.2, and 1.5 is seriously good; it means you're starting to have sound multiplier, infrastructural contributions.
I'm probably at 1.8, which is about 97th percentile. I promoted to "1 in ~100" because I have a lot of creative talents, cultural insight, and design experience. That's just a ballpark. I'm somewhere between 1-in-10 and 1-in-1000 (among software engineers). It's highly subjective and has a lot to do with tool fit, project/person coherence, and peoples' motivations. In some companies, I'm the absolute last guy you want to hire. In others, I'm a 4-sigma catch. Especially at the upper end, it depends a lot more on fit than anything objective.
My point with "1 in ~100" was that, while I won't claim to be average, if you're at Yahoo's size you almost certainly have people who think like me. If you can't find them through normal methods and have to acq-hire to get top talent, that's on you, but I think you're spilling money on the floor. It'd be cheaper, in the long run, to develop what you have internally.
Interesting credentials, but I prefer to rank professional software engineers on the Freyr scale, which ranges from 'Fink Melange' to 'Banana Whelp'. It's a complex system based on myriad factors, and even discounts for spatial-temporal mislocations and organizational dissynergies.
Right now, I'm a 'Piebald Lummox', which places me squarely in the 99.3 percentile. In other words, I command top dollar and you're an idiot if you don't hire me.
If you need any further credentials, I'll tell you about my inverse Graftenberg scale of managerial excellence. I'm currently at -ΞΎ.
Haha, "here's an article I prepared earlier"! Looks like an interesting read, I'll go through it now.
I understand what you mean, given the sample size it's statistically likely that there must be a some number of extraordinarily talented devs. And that they're not nurturing that talent. It is a fair observation I must say.
I probably sound like a complete dick but I'm being sincere. I often wonder where on the scale I sit (e.g. 10 in 100?), and whether I'm undervaluing myself or my talents, or even whether I'm overvaluing it? So I'm wondering how/why you arrived at your personal valuation. Hope that's not taken the wrong way.