The reality is that like most very large software organizations mediocrity is the default. Based on the hires I personally know of recently, even Google is qui

The reality is that like most very large software organizations mediocrity is the default. Based on the hires I personally know of recently, even Google is quite obviously and visibly well underway in the process of mediocre-ization. Fill your company with mass hires to get "area under the curve." Make vanity hires. Slant compensation to the top 10%. Hire only the desperate who couldn't find work elsewhere when doing school recruiting but consider yourselves "successful" in college recruiting. Have people who are so institutionalized they not just mostly have never worked outside, they wouldn't be able to. Congratulate Foo for 22 Years at XXXX! Hire tons of low cost contractors. Be that company where teams of inexpensive contractors don't just "help out" on projects by making everything harder, they go on to work for the company for 16 years. Build out in lower cost locations without imposing a bar - after all, engineering hours are fungible and even if the quality is lower you can do 3:1 - and they'll have mentoring from the Valley engineers assigned to turn them into successful teams. It's just engineering. It turns out that mediocrity in coding is very, very bad.