In my experience, top talent is most valuable in the early stages of a company. That is when it can have the greatest impact. Communication overhead is low, sma

In my experience, top talent is most valuable in the early stages of a company. That is when it can have the greatest impact. Communication overhead is low, smart people can make fast decisions, and just get things done quickly. By the time you have 100's of engineers, everything will be quite watered down. Anyone exceptional will get dragged down in bureaucracy, red tape, processes, procedures, enormous amount of useless meetings, etc. Maybe I've just been in the wrong companies. Having top talent is always better than not having it, but often it is wasted. You get promised the world and wind up spending half your days in Zoom meetings and waiting for PRs to be approved.