Given the limits imposed by Job's comment, which parameters the construct, it may be that the set of "B Players" are (failed) A players, who've involuntarily been forced a step down the ladder, or, alternatively, they are C players who've convinced some unspecified hiring intermediary that they're on the rise...
However one becomes a B player, by definition, one is constrained...one can only hire C players...dimming the prospects for success...so, for B, there appears to be little chance of ascending, or re-ascending, to A player status...
The right way to think about it is to realize that hiring is a very difficult business, and we all make mistakes. So it's not who they hire, but who they intend to hire. They still miss.
So A players end up hiring B players when they don't want to, and sometimes A players sneak through the B player's filter.
And this is why, when people that are apparently very good leave your company, you have to wonder if you have to much B team, and you are letting them run amok.
when B players found the company. For example software companies started by people who aren't excellent at writing software. And B hires C isn't even a bad outcome in that case, the founders may have other advantages and go on to be successful.
This. Can people please stop quoting Jobs? He was a massive narcissist who propped himself up on other people's work.
This bullshit about A players was just his way of forcing everyone that worked for him to fear not delivering on his absurd expectations lest they become a "B" player.
Tangentially, I've always wondered, in that model, how B players ever get hired.