Thanks for the feedback. Luckily I do have some autonomy and can onboard who I feel is a strong candidate. It's more when I participate in hiring for other tea

Thanks for the feedback. Luckily I do have some autonomy and can onboard who I feel is a strong candidate. It's more when I participate in hiring for other teams and object to certain candidates that I just want to slap my palm to my forehead. It only affects my team when we depend on deliverables from other teams. "must be better than the last hired engineer" - This is definitely more aspirational than a hard rule and in fact financially unfeasible in the long term. However, it's a useful measuring stick when you comparing candidates. I typically use existing team members as reference points and try to imagine where the candidate before me will fit in the range of talent we already have.