> What if you don't get the best people by offering huge financial incentives
You aren’t guaranteed the best people if you do; but you are excluded from getting the best people if you don’t.
If a person is the best person, then all other things being equal (they interview well, like all potential job opportunities equally), they will accept the job with the highest pay. Obviously that’s a simplification of any situation.
Focusing on financial incentives and career development is what makes most of us get better. I study my craft and improve not just because of intrinsic value, but because I can make more money. The extrinsic rewards are the only reason people join corporations, otherwise we’d all work for ourselves. You may not like it, but it is true.
> Obviously that’s a simplification of any situation.
Yeah, I believe it's an oversimplification to the point that it ceases to be useful. All other things are not the same when you're running a privacy-focused "for the public good and the internet" charity vs when you're running a profit-focused "the public good is irrelevant" ad-tech company.
I don't know who the best developers are, but I have a feeling that a few of them are working on open source projects and aren't working on new ad products that would make them dozens or hundreds of millions if they worked for Google.
My impression is that you'll get a narrow field of candidates if "we pay you a lot" is your argument for why they should work for you. And on the flip side, if you say "we pay you well, but not FAANG level", then you exclude some people with a certain personality trait. I'm not sure that you're creating an issue if you don't attract those people when your motive is not "profit above all else" but essentially "profit doesn't matter, we're a non-profit".
You aren’t guaranteed the best people if you do; but you are excluded from getting the best people if you don’t.
If a person is the best person, then all other things being equal (they interview well, like all potential job opportunities equally), they will accept the job with the highest pay. Obviously that’s a simplification of any situation.
Focusing on financial incentives and career development is what makes most of us get better. I study my craft and improve not just because of intrinsic value, but because I can make more money. The extrinsic rewards are the only reason people join corporations, otherwise we’d all work for ourselves. You may not like it, but it is true.