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I would never want the best developers. Imagine the giant pain in the back of these primadonna always thinking they can get paid more in their next job. And how you should give them this or that, or how you should change your development stack, language, processes, chair color, etc. I only need very few geniuses and a lot of normal ones. 80/20, remember?!


So, the best developers are always primadonna's now? Maybe the ones who grind leetcode all the time because they have something to prove are the primadonas, and you are somehow selecting for them.

For skills, balanced team makes sense. You put a 10x type person in a room full of 0.5x people then yeah they'll start complaining about the chair color because the job sucks and they would kill for the chance to get on a better team.


this


Damn, you must have had some rough hires.

The very best people I've ever worked with don't fit any of those characteristics you've mentioned.

Although I will say if a developer of yours wants a different chair, get them a better chair. They aren't that expensive and they are durable. Sometimes the overhead of getting $1000 purchases approved adds up to almost the same as the purchase itself. Give your developers some leeway to order equipment, software, books, etc... without approval up to some reasonable limit. It won't cost the company that much and your people will be happier and feel trusted.


Why do you think the best engineers are hard to work with?


The good news for you is if the target is to hire mediocre developers, you're likely to hit it.


Your definition of best engineer doesn't sound like they're the best engineer.


> always thinking they can get paid more in their next job

Isn't that the definition of career progress? I don't think it applies to developers only.




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