No doubt Joel Spolsky is a great software engineer. But sometimes when reading articles like the 'great developers', I feel like he's standing on the high ground and look down on us mere mortals.

Sure it's near impossible to find 'great' developers, but most companies don't need great developers, they need good competent developers and there are plenty of them on the markets at any time. I would say the positions that require a 'great' developer to work on are as rare as great developers themselves.