[svensken]

The point you make about hiring ordinary people is an important one. The timeless, old essay "Why I Never Hire Brilliant Men"[1] makes a lot of great arguments to this end.

The meat of the essay comes down to this quote:

Business and life are built upon successful mediocrity; and victory comes to companies, not through the employment of brilliant men, but through knowing how to get the most out of ordinary folks.

Your grandfather-in-law is the perfect example of something I wish we'd see more of today.

1: https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Why_I_Never_Hire_Brilliant_...

[organsnyder]

I'd never read that before—thanks for sharing it. The author's examples of people that led him astray sound eerily familiar to the founder of a startup that I spent a few months at earlier this year... (which, thankfully, I was able to leave before things got too bad)