If it's profitable to hire a 1x engineer it should be profitable to hire a 10x engineer at 10x pay. Suppose the earning/engineer multiplier is 4x: if you make

If it's profitable to hire a 1x engineer it should be profitable to hire a 10x engineer at 10x pay. Suppose the earning/engineer multiplier is 4x: if you make 4x for each 1x engineer, you should make 40x from a 10x engineer. And, currently the earnings/engineer multiplier in most well known bay area tech companies is enormous.