One additional note on this topic... Elite talent can sometimes be toxic to organizations. Unless totally isolated to purely technical work, "Prima Donnas" can be a big problem. I have seen great engineers leave the organization because they simply cannot work with the bad hire. Some key interview questions should help identify and avoid such team killers and keep the org happy, focused and motivated.
Totally agree. I have seen semi-technical (or non-technical) executives assume that engineers are virtually interchangeable. They questioned the value of hiring top-talent instead of multiple entry level engineers. In this case, an army of entry level engineers could not address the rocket science that really requires a career of deep domain experience to tackle.
100% agree. A top tier developer will easily produce 4X the output of an average one, as long as you can free them up to focus on the important stuff. So often the "top talent" gets moved to team lead or tutoring roles where they can't continue to produce. That's why it's essential to value purely technical people and have a purely technical career progression (if titles are important) aside from the Dev > Sr Dev > Lead > Manager type leadership path.
Yeah, often the best thing for a senior engineer is to fix important technical problems. But, companies instead hire people and the senior engineers get stuck spending all their time helping others work in a broken codebase rather than fixing that codebase.
One additional note on this topic... Elite talent can sometimes be toxic to organizations. Unless totally isolated to purely technical work, "Prima Donnas" can be a big problem. I have seen great engineers leave the organization because they simply cannot work with the bad hire. Some key interview questions should help identify and avoid such team killers and keep the org happy, focused and motivated.
Totally agree. I have seen semi-technical (or non-technical) executives assume that engineers are virtually interchangeable. They questioned the value of hiring top-talent instead of multiple entry level engineers. In this case, an army of entry level engineers could not address the rocket science that really requires a career of deep domain experience to tackle.
Yeah, people need to understand that engineers are essentially inventors. No number of average ones will replace a Thomas Edison or Linus Torvalds.
100% agree. A top tier developer will easily produce 4X the output of an average one, as long as you can free them up to focus on the important stuff. So often the "top talent" gets moved to team lead or tutoring roles where they can't continue to produce. That's why it's essential to value purely technical people and have a purely technical career progression (if titles are important) aside from the Dev > Sr Dev > Lead > Manager type leadership path.
Yeah, often the best thing for a senior engineer is to fix important technical problems. But, companies instead hire people and the senior engineers get stuck spending all their time helping others work in a broken codebase rather than fixing that codebase.