| I'm going to venture a guess: I think PG's "Blub paradox" [1] applies to all kinds of skills, generally. In very open-ended (multi-dimensional) domains, a practitioner who's achieved level "B" will not generally be able to appreciate the additional value of a practitioner at a significantly higher level "N >> B" -- at least not enough to compensate them at a correspondingly higher level. In a constrained evaluation (like a few hours of interviewing) the probable outcome is that higher-level practitioner will be considered slightly better, with a lot of strange stuff thrown in, of unclear value; after all engineering is a very open-ended domain (unlike athletics for example, where just by watching for a few minutes you can say someone is much much better). Since engineering skill is so multi-dimensional, one key to hiring well is understanding which characteristics are super important for the specific role, will therefore be compensated appropriately. Looking for generic "good engineers" will probably be a waste of time, or very hard to accomplish. Correspondingly, companies which can compensate well to acquire people with specific skills will probably lure away engineers from other employers who value them as just amorphous "good engineers". To be able to hire good engineers, the hiring process needs, at the very least: 1. Good engineers as part of the selection team, so that they can select good engineers.
2. People who understand the (additional) value brought by good/great engineers, so that they can make the decision to compensate accordingly. PS: All this assuming that the business model is functional (i.e. the business can afford to pay a good engineer's market rate) and the work being done actually requires the additional skills of a high-quality engineer. -- [1]: PG's article on the Blub paradox -- http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html |