[numbchuckskills]

"great, you can pay them average salaries and they will be so loyal to your giant company"

The point is that they become loyal to each other, the company reaping a reward is just a side benefit of people working towards a common goal.

I was on a similar 'elite' skunkworks dev team in a company of ~ 35,000 that had executive support, and the results were insanely good. You can't manipulate people to do this; You can however give them the freedom to make it happen.

[potatolicious]

I've had the opportunity to work on much smaller 'elite' teams before (7-10 people), and if I didn't have to eat and pay rent I'd do it for free.

The amount of productivity, support, and "you grok me"-ness is so extreme that it's really a wonder to behold. As a regular dev now I really do look back on those days and wish I can do it all over again.