[chrisseaton]

> and you hire as many as you can within your budget

If you believe this then what's your explanation for why Google hires a smaller number of expensive engineers, rather than a larger number of cheaper engineers? They could hire 10x if they went for only lower-tier college new-grads!

[zaroth]

Sorry if I missed the word “qualified” - I felt it was presumed by the word “hired”.

Obviously a business would not be particularly successful hiring janitors to write code simply because they could pay them less.

[lbotos]

Google is budgeting for more expensive engineers, so they end up hiring less.