It's amazing how symmetric but decoupled the problem is with good people looking for great companies and great companies looking for good people. Adam Wiggins from Heroku described it like dating sites: in theory, there are plenty of people of all sexes looking for other people to date, copulate, or marry -- but in practice getting to a match is quite hard. We might have been talking about startup financing at the time, not hiring, but there the situation is similar. Is there a name for this category of problem?

For me, networking really is an under-appreciated skill for engineers. It makes finding something awesome much easier. Also, it seems like the best thing I ever did to increase the size of my network was do a startup. You're constantly talking to people about financing, biz dev, sales, or even just commiserating / celebrating with other founders.

Dropbox is looking to hire some great people. Dropbox is an awesome place to work with one of the best reputations in tech, which is great. But, it is still hard to hire. [obligatory self serving link: http://dropbox.com/jobs , ask me anything: ivan@dropbox.com ]