This is basically a rehash of the usual article on the topic that says the same things and is published every couple months. One twist was notable. Rather than

This is basically a rehash of the usual article on the topic that says the same things and is published every couple months. One twist was notable. Rather than try to compete on basic hygenic issues and market realities, the advice is to just give up: "[Y]ou will never beat, say, Google on perks or job security so don’t even bother to pitch those. You’ll never beat Wall Street banks or rich big companies on cash salary so don’t pitch that either" First, this assumes you are hiring people who are choosing between your company, Google and top Wall Street jobs. That seems unlikely. Very few people want to work on Wall Street and not that many are applying simultaneously to Google and some random company that you or I are running. Second, you absolutely can't hire top talent by not being competitive with salary, by which I mean 75th percentile or higher. The competent people are like 1% of the job pool out there and have plenty of choices. You also can't attract top talent by not offering standard benefits. You just can't. Advocating that you shouldn't bother with competitive pay or benefits is obviously poor advice. So one must ask what is going on here, why is this being advocated? We can't really know. Perhaps the author is trying to justify the low pay and poor benefits his company offers.