"Steve Jobs is popularly quoted, `A players hire A players; B players hire C players; and C players hire D players. It doesn't take long to get to Z players. This trickle-down effect causes bozo explosions in companies.'"
So who hires the B players?
So who hires the B players?
I imagine this quote working like this: a player of skill level $p$ hires players around skill level of $p^2$. You assign classes as follows: A = 1.0, B = 0.9, C = 0.81, D = 0.64, E = 0.4, ... Now A players hire other A players only as long as their skill is exactly equal to 1.0; if it dips even the tiniest amount, the degradation process starts.
Of course the whole thing is utter nonsense, but if I had to picture it, that's how I would do it.