[mrjin]

Why that is surprising? Mediocre people in leadership for sure will hire people worse than themselves for obvious reasons:

1. Much less likely to challenge them.

2. Numbers look much better.

3. When things went south, there would be someone to blame.

[3np]

More commonly,

4. They are not great at assessing and contextualizing skill and experience

[thrown_22]

Because I've seen it even in places where the guy doing the hiring was the major share holder. He flat out told me that no one would pay a salary like what I was asking. It went downhill from there and he didn't take it well when I told him I was making more than that now and I figured this was going to be a relaxing year to wind down from my current position, hence why I was asking for less.