Keep in mind “great engineer” will be a subjective term that means different things to everyone.

To Meta, it might mean cream of the crop, $1m+ engineer. To early Google, it might mean Stanford grad with deep CS knowledge. To a no-name startup, it might mean someone who accepts the job who takes initiative and knows how to crank out ugly code quickly on AWS and makes good prioritization decisions.

What's the last "deep CS" thing that Google built? Isn't most of what comes out of their shop re-wrapped known tech with mediocre UX?

Google Cloud and Gemini are two examples

Also only hiring great engineers is an existential risk. Every time someone leaves, you lose a part of the business that is hard to replace.

It sounds counter-intuitive, but mediocracy usually works better in the long run.

You need a mix - a team of only stars will fail, and a team of only mediocre members will fail.

You want one or two stars, chemistry among the whole team, and good fundamentals.

Good sports examples: the LA Dodgers, 90s Chicago Bulls (a few stars, a few normal players, good fundamentals, and great chemistry)

Bad sports examples: the 2023 Mets with Verlander and Scherzer (both overpaid divas with bad attitudes that hated each other), the current Yankees (a few stars, no fundamentals or discipline)

Exactly, that's why I said "only hiring great engineers".

For startups it's best to start with at least one or two good technical co-founders, as the risk of losing them is lower when compared to an employee.

I'm a Dodgers fan and I'm kinda confused by your take that the Dodgers roster is different from the 2023 Mets or current Yankees.

If anything, the Blue Jays are the example, not the Dodgers.

Sorry, I was talking about the previous iteration of the Dodgers that beat the Yankees. I haven’t been watching this year, other than Ohtani doing Ohtani stuff.

The previous Dodgers were stacked, but I meant that they had good chemistry and fundamentals. They beat the Yankees because the Yankees just made too many mistakes.

The Mets hired highly paid stars but couldn’t find chemistry, as nobody could get along. They did have some good eras with DeGrom, Syndegaard, etc, but if I remember, many of those stars started out small and grew into their stardom with the team.

Hiring great engineers is only part of the problem. Management and product needs enough vision and foresight to allow the great engineers to execute. It’s doesn’t matter how great your engineering team is if you keep redirecting them like a deaf stubborn dementia patient.

Management and product needing vision and foresight is an excellent call out. I can't help but think a lot of these self-proclaimed 9-9-6 startups are in reality 11-3-6 startups with a bunch of wasted time padding to 9-9-6.

Ah the classic "management is bad" excuse. No engineer looking to deflect responsibility should forget that one.