[bitL]

Your problem would be that such talents don't have time nor need to complete whatever assignment you give to them. What if they programmed a core of enterprise cloud system handling 100,000s threads and millions of messages/second you might be unknowingly using daily, wrote papers about it you might have read already but it didn't occur to you and you are asking them to write a concurrent ring buffer? They would just say you good bye and won't consider ever joining you unless they are in deep troubles, which is exactly state you would like to avoid.

Major talents are usually involved with dozens of side tech & social activities, charity etc. Why should they spend time in proving their worth to you? You are operating on the premise people are equal in capabilities, but they aren't, some may be way ahead of your group specifically in the area you really need, to make yourself competitive. No exceptions rule is IMO a really bad idea - it's like reverse of affirmative action, i.e. penalizing/ignoring visible greatness.

Frankly, 10 years ago I thought what you are doing was a good idea; now I am no longer sure for the aforementioned reasons. Team work is not groupthink/socialism if you want to be successful.

[mrkurt]

If you treat people inconsistently, you open yourself up to tremendous political problems within an organization. _Particularly_ when it comes to hiring, or performance evaluation, or firing.

I think these mythical candidates who have an impressive body of work are probably going to be more thoughtful about a company they join up with than you'd naturally give them credit for. We pitch the heck out of our org, explain why we think it's awesome, and what people can do if they join up. If we can't get someone to see enough value to put time into deciding if it's right for them, I'm not sure they'd ever work out for us.