You don’t have to be an A player
There’s a saying that A players hire A players and B players hire C players. I’m personally not a big fan of categorizing people into grades but there’s a bit of truth behind the statement. I don’t think this is the right framing though – what matters is raising the bar in the long term.
No matter how good you are, you should try to hire people better than you and make sure they will hold the same bar – that way the company gets better:
- Because of the injection of “better” employees
- Because existing employees will keep growing – they’ll have good peers to look up to
This is however not necessarily doable or optimal – having only staff+ software engineers might not be the best solution as there might be better trade offs in regards to revenue. Senior engineers can do easy tasks, but it might be cheaper to have junior engineers doing them. The best known company having senior engineers only was Netflix but even then they eventually moved to hire junior engineers.
From there I think the right hiring strategy is to hire the best at a given level and more importantly, hire people with high growth potential. The risk here is that hiring on potential is highly subjective so this is where biases will sneak in (and you end up with a lack of diversity).
Keeping the right hiring strategy is a delicate balance that is especially difficult as priorities and needs of the company change over time. You should do your best to raise the bar – not necessarily short term (as the entrance bar) but the long term bar. Raising the bar means hiring the right people but also investing into your employees and helping them grow.