I think Dan's missing two important points: 1) Great devs want to work with other great devs. If you want to blast forward you don't want to spend days debuggi

I think Dan's missing two important points: 1) Great devs want to work with other great devs. If you want to blast forward you don't want to spend days debugging really crappy code someone else wrote, or explaining ideas to someone who's significantly slower than you. (We've all been on both sides of that particular situation - the good ones put in the work to get faster.) 2) People don't quit jobs, they quit managers. Also, at least for everyone I know, people generally quit jobs first, and look for jobs later, meaning that if they have a good team to work with and a good manager, you're never going to get them. This means that the great developer is not a standalone creature; great developers will cluster under a great manager, and then that unit will be immensely productive and inseparable. Building that should be a tech CEO's goal.