[paulcole]

> One of them reads so slowly/poorly that she can't keep up with her emails at all, frequently misses important information and makes really egregious spelling errors. This would maybe be ok in some roles

Which roles would this be OK in?

To answer your main question, average people can accomplish a lot. This should be obvious because most people are average. Very few people will say so because they accomplished something so they must not be average!

[asilia]

Which roles would this be OK in? --> Good question. I guess I was trying to be nice.

To answer your main question, average people can accomplish a lot --> Would you say that mediocre early employees are not necessarily a death sentence for an early-stage startup? Have you seen examples (serious question)?

[paulcole]

I guess an important place to start is how you define “mediocre employees.”

Is showing up on time, working steadily, making some progress, and then going home mediocre or excellent? Is having fanatical drive, taking sole ownership of the most important projects, and working 14 hours a day mediocre or excellent?

Which of these employees is less mediocre to you:

• Employee 1 - Says they’ll get 4 things done every week and always gets those things done

• Employee 2 - Says they’ll get 10 things done every week and they always get 8 done, but you can never predict which 8

There’s no clear definition of “mediocre” so you can bend it to whatever picture you want to paint.

I think my overall point is that it’s easy to look at a startup that fails and go, “the early employees were mediocre” and just make up whatever criteria you want to paint those people as mediocre. But it almost certainly would’ve failed with a Tech Bro Dream Team as well.

Most people (myself included) are just average and mediocre and will do anything to convince themselves they’re not. “Oh, I worked at a successful startup and mediocre early employees are death to a startup so I must not be mediocre.”

[asilia]

Mediocre employees = showing up on time, being well-meaning, but making very slow progress and many mistakes due to a lack of, to be honest, intelligence. Not really understanding why those mistakes are a problem even after receiving an explanation and coaching. Do you think that's a death sentence?