Startup CEOs: you are overestimating your tech talent 13 years ago
Bingo! I have seen the smartest engineers (Princeton PhD in one case) rot in bad environments and mediocre engineers provide solid contributions in strong, engineering focused environments. I have rarely come across an engineer that doesn't want to build great products. If you want to suck the energy and enthusiasm out of team, add in weekly 120min planning meetings, required daily progress reports, and 4-5 product pivots.