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I agree. The product is very valuable, and with the right execution and marketing they'll do well. But I can't figure out why companies like this--let's be honest, 80% of YC-funded companies-- need the "best and brightest."

I ask this honestly...why would the best and brightest want to work for consumer-facing companies with minimal salary and the equivalent of a lottery ticket for cashing out in 4-5 years? Maybe I just don't get the SV hype--I'm from Chicago. I thought we were past the rockstar/ninja stuff. Don't you just need people who can, ya know, "deliver" and "execute your tasks efficiently." Maybe even scale your app to multiple EC2 servers. And maybe if they're really motivated, contribute to your "vision."

I'll admit that my "lifestyle" business plans are basically the same-- a fairly simple B2B CRUD app that hopefully gains traction when I release it. But I would never even think of courting the kind of talent I would expect to be attracted to NASA, SpaceX, <insert green energy startup here>, etc.

What am I missing?

because it seems like half the time, companies are partially bought for the talent...so if you can get a much better developer it helps adds to the valuation.

but yeah quite often it seems like these companies with thousands of developers...could be run with a 20 times smaller team

So, you're saying that people are, in effect, building lottery tickets when they create start-ups? Is no one interested in building businesses anymore?

A team of good programmers is valuable in its own right, unlike a lottery ticket.

This how it works with VC funded companies, you either need to sell them or go public. The VCs need to get a return on their investment. Since there are only 1,000 companies or so going public per year, selling to another company is your best bet. And if you do that you might as well do so for the best possible price. I don't think this is bad per se.

How does a company being bought for talent work exactly? If I join a company that gets bought, how long am I usually legally obligated to work for the company that bought my current employer?

There are a number of issues at play here, but short answer, you are not legally obligated to work at all, you can leave any time.

With that said the issues involved are as such:

1. If you had equity in a company (and sometimes even if you don't) it is not uncommon to sign a non-compete contract as part of the sale that bars you from working for a competitor for about a year. 2. Often, much of the value of the sale for employees is structured as retention payments, i.e. they set up a number of bonuses that are spread out over a few years, and you need to work at the company for that duration to get those bonuses.

There is a difference between want and need. 42Floors WANTS the best and brightest, but really only NEEDS solid players to be successful.

That said, if you only WANT for solid players, you usually end up with crappy ones.

i think a lot of people like to talk about how they want the best, and it makes everybody feel good, and the 90%ers (already really good, top decile!) can't tell the difference between them and a 99.9er because they haven't seen one before. also, "goodness" is multi-dimensional which confuses the issue further, its much more than raw coding chops, business domain knowledge is often more valuable.

but it doesn't matter if people are unaware that they're not the best. software gets built, money is made, and people sort themselves into the type of job they're ready for. especially because ability to build a highly valued company is probably a seperate dimension of "goodness" than coding chops. and a more valued dimension.

Depends on how you define "the best". I guess it's partly an ego stroking thing but also based on the sort of problems that the company might hope to have to solve in the future.

Of course being "the best" depends on the company. Let's consider someone like DHH from 37 Signals. He created a very popular web framework and a suite of popular products so no doubt that he is a very productive and talented developer. However would he be the best person to choose if you wanted to do complex cryptanalysis or develop a high performance OS kernel?

What if you took someone who was skilled in these things and gave them David's job, would they be "the best" then?

I think it is this confusion that makes interviewers think they must ask complex math questions to interview someone who's day job will be to write code that generates HTML.

There also seems to some confusion that you are only elite if you use the latest and coolest tools, which leads to weird stuff like someone who made a web 2.0 social chat app in nodeJS being considered better than someone who designed and implemented a 6 nines reliability infrastructure system for a bank but who was building on top of legacy Fortran/Java/Oracle.

You need the best and brightest so that you can say you have the best and brightest.

You say that you have the best and brightest so that you can say you have the best and brightest.

I may be too young to remember correctly, but I think this whole "we need particle physicists to sweep our floors" mentality started with Google. I'm sure it was around before then, but I definitely noticed an increase in that focus after Google became well known for only hiring "the best".

NeXT was definitely like this.

Crap teams suck, no matter what they're working on.

I find it very HN of you to think that programming talent means being able to churn out code fast that does difficult things.

I'm just guessing here, but maybe 42floors want to make good, well engineered software that users love to use and that is maintainable for a while still. This has very little to do with being a "haskell/clojure ninja", yet very much with software talent.

From experience, people like Dan often don't make "well engineered software that is maintainable for awhile." I know Dan personally and he's a great guy, but what makes Dan valuable is his intelligence, intuition, and ability to Get Things Done. Sure, he can code, but lots of people can do that just fine.

I think this is a fair point, and mostly agree. However, when I look back at my life and see all the things I got which I considered to be beyond what I deserved simply by for asking them....I have a hard time faulting them.

I would also note that things are not always as disparate as they seem. I'm sure some people at my high school raised an eyebrow when someone generally regarded as a strange, nerdy, and not particularly attractive loner started dating one of the most popular and attractive cheerleaders in school, but if they dug deeper they might have realized that we had a relationship based on a shared love of music and various other interests. So what at first might have seemed lopsided was rather balanced.

It could be that 42Floors has something to offer that Dan finds attractive, even if it's just a steady paycheck that provides the freedom to work on other things. I'll let them sort that out themselves.

I also think it's important to read this whole post. I think they probably don't expect this offer to be taken up...they're using it as link bait. I think they legitimately admire Dan and wanted a way to show that, and figured they could do that while also commenting on their hiring process, benefits, and draw in other interested parties. I'm sure they're also serious about the offer.

I have mixed feelings about link-baity content, but I can see where they're coming from.

> We're courting on all fronts. Contact us at jobs@42floors.com.

If anyone is a little jealous of this offer, hit them up. You never know.

In my experience with recent internet businesses the criteria you outline points to a management deficit. They want self-starters, likely due to a lack of process (as you note, illustrated by the lack of resources available to attract talent at the level they desire).

It seems entirely possible 42 Floors has bigger plans for the future, and would like to get some top talent to help making those plans a reality. There's a lot of companies where you could go to their starting point, and ask the same question, but you'd never ask yourself that question today, when those companies have grown into something way beyond what their initial pitch implied.

Appreciate you pointing this out. Yes, we have big aspirations.

While I know what you're trying to say, surely you mean "top 10%" devs, not "top 90%".

Oh, and the real answer is of course "because they can".