You need cash to run a business, wherever it comes from. Otherwise you don't have a business in the first place.

You need engineering talent to run a tech business. Otherwise you don’t have a tech business in the first place.

Money comes from anywhere, tech talent is fixed in supply.

A business needs cash to operate. It doesn't matter what talent you have if you can't pay them. Startups die when they run out of cash, not because they couldn't hire anyone.

Startups offering more cash has no implication that they must generate revenue (although that's obvious to building a good business). The point is that operational costs exist - and so a business must already have cash to exist - and increasing costs for better salaries and benefits is a better trade-off than increasing equity which is mostly worthless anyway.

Also global tech talent has more supply than demand once you get past the SV/HN bubble. No serious startup has failed because they didn't get the perfect engineer.

That’s an interesting point of view. Do you think engineers are much more “interchangeable parts” than most HN folks seem to believe?

Customers care about solutions to their problems, not the engineering behind it. Many VC funded startups with the latest AI tech have failed because they never actually served the customers. Meanwhile there are millions of profitable small businesses running with simple boring tech that works enough to provide value to their clients.

Engineering talent is in oversupply across the US and definitely across the globe. You can easily hire PhD level talent from Brazil or India. Also FAANG companies have long ago exhausted the best talent available. Most of their hires at this scale are no better than engineers elsewhere, it's more about the interview process, benefits, location and internal politics than raw quality now.