> The truth of the matter I think is that you do not actually need the best.

Not all employees need to be the "best". But if you are a top tier company in a given field like Microsoft, you need the best minds to stay top tier, otherwise you will descend. But on the other hand you don't need the lower tier performers to stay top tier except for scaling reasons because the supply for top tier performers is a very small pool...

What management thinks is good and what employees, especially engineering type employees, think is good are usually counter.

The execs want to run the most profit to cost they can squeeze out, usually short term. The employees see the value in the senior and knowledge rich staff with higher costs long term.

That is a rule for a good project manager. When work is simple, you don't need bright people. You just need average guys. But when work is cutting edge, you need very talented people.

I think the efforts on cutting edge works has been reduced and redirected to more market-dominating trends like LLM optimizations. This is a bet. Cut off the finger for a stronger arm. And I think this bet will fail. But I thought the same about this new Gemini after Bard, and boy I was wrong.

It didn't seem that obvious a term as you described it here, but a bit of googling gave the background:

It's effectively that the more desirable elements leave, the less desirable parts stay behind and get more concentrated... So the bad employees are the salt in the dead sea

It was coined by this chap https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Webster#Career

You get the same with government jobs. Anyone smart leaves and gets a better job, so you’re left with the dregs.

I termed it "Sh*t floats" when I was in the Navy.

They're also the ones that create the most money.

Ultimately, you can only take equity away from people like that for so long. We're taking the people who actually create the value and firing them so that we can satisfy the hangers-on, meaning shareholders who often 1) don't know they even own MS and 2) are often diversified as to make a real problem with Microsoft not a dealbreaker for their financial goals.

In theory that's a manager's responsibility, but managers get (effectively) punished for firing people so that never happens in practice.

Not true, the market is exceptional for the best in tech. The problem arises when some employees think they are the best - despite the facts not lining up.

Yes and No. If you are a citizen and have “AI” experience there’s plenty of startups offering base salaries in excess of the average Microsoft total comp.

Definitely not. We are no better at finding good employees than we ever were. It's the human biases that make it bad, not the technology.