[khaki54]

It's the concept of "you don't need to be faster than the bear, just faster than whoever you're traveling with".

In this scenario, the 5x engineer (who probably isn't getting paid 5x) will do 30% better than their peers. Unlikely that you would fire the most productive engineer on the team. Moreover with better peers, 5x engineer will be inspired to rise to the challenge.

[ido]

Yep I agree with both :) underperforming coworkers are a negative effect not only due to their own ineffectiveness but also their affect on the rest of the team and their motivation (it’s very demotivating to constantly have to pick someone else’s slack). It’s a tough rut to dig a team out of if it sets (which makes it that much more important to solve early enough).

I just think that it’s not really a benefit for the better engineer to underperform either, I know I’ve always found doing well at work (which was usually more my subjective feeling about myself than anything some else told me) less stressful than doing badly (and not any less work than pretending to be busy but not working).

Being a programmer myself I also know what you can roughly get done (I still program maybe 30-40% of my working hours these days). It could be that someone I hire is magnificently productive (relative to myself/my experience elsewhere in the last 15-20 years) and is managing to hit that while also doing other things, if that’s the case good for them.

Anyway part of what makes someone a good fit is that they want to do well and find the work interesting and fulfilling. We work 4 day weeks so they still have time for other projects in their free time (and I know most/all of them have such projects).