[gilbetron]

Having done a recent stint at a Silicon Valley startup, I was honestly shocked to discover most of the engineers I was working with were at the bottom half of those I've worked with in my career. I think there are far more great engineers in SV than many places, but the truly great ones are still relatively rare and gobbled up by wealthier companies rather quickly. Even at 10x the normal amount of top notch engineers, that still only means a few thousand in the SV area.