Only hire the brightest engineers

Funny I read/viewed 2 articles saying the exact opposite but still they are both true!

Where Did All the Beautiful Code Go? by Google's Gregor Hohpe:

We hire only the brightest engineers in the industry, like which company would put on their charter, we hire only the dumbest engineers(...) but he had like a logic because I used to work for a company that made a very big statement about ?we only hire the brightest? and he had like a little chain of logic that actually invalidated or basically claimed that it?s really impossible, because if everybody only hires the brightest people, well, where do the other people go(...)

Alertbox Variability in User Performance:

Finally, programming demands the most of users and thus shows the highest variability. This table shows why the number one guideline for managing software development is to hire the best developers: Good developers are three times faster than slow ones and offer companies tremendous gain -- even when they require higher salaries. (The difference between the very best and very worst developers is typically about a factor twenty. Unfortunately, not everybody can hire only the top 1% of developers. But you can certainly endeavor to hire from the top 25%.)

Technorati tags: alertbox