I'd argue you don't need to truly be top ten, you need to be sufficiently good that finding someone better isn't worth the marginal cost (hiring is really expen

I'd argue you don't need to truly be top ten, you need to be sufficiently good that finding someone better isn't worth the marginal cost (hiring is really expensive!) Another way of thinking of this: can you be considered top 10 within a pool of 100 applicants? Also, who is "top ten" is extremely subjective, based on the company, who is evaluating, and niche. I would guess that within a 100 developer cohort there's not a lot of overlap between the top ten embedded c++ developers and the top ten react developers, and even the top ten that can do both c++ AND react.