Comment by poisonborz

Talent is not universal though. A great product/team/workplace can turn unmotivated middling knowledge people into heroes. Not only is massively more worth to raise talent in-house, heterogenous teams are way more healthy. Early Googlers wrote litanies on this.

They can pay it, it sounds good for investors/general public, but if you take away the brand/hype fapping on "we only have the best" would sounds like a red flag to an experienced engineer.