Comment by dragonwriter

> Not sure if anybody has mentioned this flaw yet, but this supposed "Dead Sea Effect," if real, would rely upon the least-talented engineers being able to accurately asses their own talent level.

No, it only requires hiring managers from other firms to do so; better alternative prospects is sufficient to explain the effect.

> This is contrary to the well-known Dunning-Kruger effect

No, even if the prior part was wrong, it would be contrary to the popular misperception of D-K, but not the actual D-K effect [0], in which self-assessment is compressed (on both ends) toward somewhere in the third quartile, but still monotonically increasing with actual ability, such that the better people are at something the better they think they are, it's just that the bottom ~2/3 somewhat overestimate where they are in the distribution and the top ~1/3 underestimate it.

But, relevant to the situation at end, since positive self-assessment still increases with ability, even if higher self-assessment with higher real ability was needed to drive the Dead Sea effect, that would be exactly what the D-K research shows exists.

[0] https://www.talyarkoni.org/blog/2010/07/07/what-the-dunning-...