> Hiring good engineers is not that hard

I feel this is misleading. I think a reasonable definition of a 'good' engineer is engineer in the 75th percentile and above for their craft. You can debate other definitions, I'm not saying this is the only reasonable one. But by this definition, I think you can immediately see that it is hard -- given 4 engineers, we expect that only one of them is "good". And what if your standards are higher? What if you only want _great_ engineers? I can't believe that it's easy.

Please explain how to hire good engineers. This is a question literally only you have figured out, so your knowledge would be extremely useful here.

If anything it shows the applicant was over qualified and it probably wasn't a great fit; to have this guy, who has battle experience, in a place where the interviewer was looking for a one-size-fit-all canned type answer.

If I am hiring, I need these characteristics:

1. Person who cares 2. Person who is knowledgeable 3. These two must be the same person!

Hard for a bad engineer to hire a good one maybe? If so, not the biggest problem to have.

It's hard because people are threatened by good people and don't want to hire them, and also objective standards leave less wiggle room to sneak in your friends or others in your peer group.

Many, many forces lined up against meritocracy. All the incumbents, for example, tend to have something to lose, but it's the incumbents who decide if you are hired.

It's a miracle that there are any good companies once the original owners are gone.