[xnull6guest]

Something I've been thinking about for a long time - I'll add this here because you and others at HN are more likely to be able to act on it than I am.

It seems to me that hiring teams of programmers that are known to work well together and have proven track records is a smart idea. The reason is that hiring individual programmers, who may or may not get along with one another, and whose individual hire decisions may or may not cover the breadth needed or may result in redundancies - is an inefficient and strange practice.

What if you needed an IT department and could hire groups of programmers who have, collectively, proven track records of managing IT well? Need a website done? Yeah, you could hire a designer, a backend server woman, a database guy, a CMS guru - and hope they all get along well and work together.

Or we could imagine hiring a team of people who manage themselves to get the result you're asking for.

Dunno. Zany idea.

[dkasper]

That's basically the idea behind a lot of talent acquisitions.

[hkmurakami]

Also the idea behind hiring a VP of Engineering (at a startup) who'll bring in his previous team(s).

[michaelvmata]

It happens naturally to a degree in a top down fashion. Newly hired executes / directors / managers often bring in their own people.