
Mediocre talent in Silicon Valley - dannylandau
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/08/04/bay-area-hiring-stiff-competition-for-mediocre-talent.html
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grobaru
Most of the people are mediocre. Just because they work in hyped companies
(Uber,Google,Facebook whatever) does not mean they are the top 10%.

And even being in top 10% does not directly translate into being able to
create an extraordinary product.

There are hundreds of thousands talented people that did not buy into hype or
are not too ambitious to even attempt the amazingly tiring interviews at these
companies.

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WalterSear
The author is chasing 'name brand' employees.

His premise is essentially that, by circular reasoning, all the good engineers
are at big companies, and, since Google and Facebook are paying too much, you
are better off poaching from a "downmarket" brand, like Microsoft and Amazon,
instead of actually being invested in your hiring process. Or, heaven forbid,
fostering development of your existing employees.

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rhizome
I've seen a lot of evidence that medium-nothing companies are either unwilling
or unable to promote from within.

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notacoward
The most insightful comment IMO was this:

> Once everything becomes “epic,” nothing less will do, so hype ends up
> everywhere.

When everybody's special, nobody's special. In Silicon Valley, "epic" and
synonyms have been so overused that they now encompass even the truly
mediocre. Merely being there is considered evidence of success, being
elsewhere is treated as evidence of failure. Whatever this article's
particular failings might be, at least it helps to highlight the hubris that
drives the endless hype.

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dannylandau
I found the article premise pretty convincing. If I want top talent, I usually
try to find a software engineer from Eastern Europe.

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jpeg_hero
Very true.

I hope this comment thread gets all those comments from the other thread where
engineers should get paid $1m+ a year.

Hahaha.

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thesimpsons1022
haha he can take the Amazon "talent". we in the bay can stick with Google,
Facebook, Uber, Airbnb, and Stanford talent.

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mangahero
Surprisingly, it's pretty true. Amazon talent is pretty bad.

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biocomputation
It is my opinion that most of us are mediocre. It's how we apply ourselves
that really matters.

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kevinr
Okay, all plausible, until the last paragraph.

> Instead, here in Seattle, I work with amazing people -- who came from
> Amazon, Boeing, Microsoft and other area startups.

Hold the phone, did the author just call _Microsoft_ , Amazon, and fucking
_Boeing_ __startups __?? The Valley really did get to him, didn 't it.

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williamstein
It's just a non-optimally worded sentence. He means people who came from
Amazon, Boeing, Microsoft, and -- in addition to those people -- also people
who come from Seattle-area startups (such as
[https://www.rover.com/](https://www.rover.com/), to pick one at random).

