>)I might not think that I have to compete on salary to get top talent. I may have a method of convincing talent to work here based on non-financial incentives.
Great point and I sort of side stepped that. It's not one not talked about enough. I didn't get a sense of that from the poster I replied to, but perhaps there is a compelling story there.
> 1. You don't believe top developers are intrinsically 'worth' the amount that FB/Goog/Amzn/ and many other SV companies pay, that it's not a net win for the company to have top talent.
You're conflating two things here.
I don't think that "top developers are intrinsically 'worth' the amount that [[..]] SV companies pay" (emphasis mine).
There is nothing intrinsic about a developer's value. A developer's value to their company is some proportion (<100%) of the value they add to the company.
Their value to FB is unrelated to their value to XYZ Corp.
> it's not a net win for the company to have top talent
That does not follow from a view on the intrinsic value of developers. I know that it is a net win to have top talent, but:
a) They might not be "worth" (to me) what FB etc will pay them.
b)I might not think that I have to compete on salary to get top talent. I may have a method of convincing talent to work here based on non-financial incentives.