I sympathize with your disdain. I prefer to reject this school of thought directly when I can, because it is a cultural abetting of incompetence. A company that

I sympathize with your disdain. I prefer to reject this school of thought directly when I can, because it is a cultural abetting of incompetence. A company that practices this will atrophy and lose to a competitor which doesn't, even if that takes a while. Hiring the best requires hiring teams, not individuals. A group of star ICs that don't mesh well together could form a mediocre team, and a group of otherwise unremarkable (being a bit hyperbolic for the sake of discussion here) ICs who work well together could mesh together to form an all-star team. Of course, I'm being hyperbolic when I say that because I think that part of what makes a star IC is someone who's good at assisting the team -- that's part of what makes great teams so devastatingly effective. That's part of what makes me very skeptical of that school of thought -- if you're really naive to believe that great teams come when you group a bunch of star ICs together (hint: it doesn't), how would you even know if you ended up screwing it up and it came out dysfunctional? You wouldn't, because you're not incentivized to. Your job as a manager and leader ended when you hired them. I find this kind of laughable, honestly.