[spimmy]

because there is, by definition, an extremely limited supply of the "best engineers in the world". if you can afford to pay top-10% salaries, and attract and retain top-10% engineers, more power to you.

maybe not literally "any asshole" can do it -- but it certainly asks more of your leaders to craft sociotechnical systems oriented towards learning and enablement. and i don't think that's a bad thing.

[latchup]

There is more to choosing a job than money. No engineer likes being managed by incompetent assholes, and the best engineers also get to choose the best managers. And the bar for those is, sadly, quite low.