Depends on how you define "the best". I guess it's partly an ego stroking thing but also based on the sort of problems that the company might hope to have to solve in the future.

Of course being "the best" depends on the company. Let's consider someone like DHH from 37 Signals. He created a very popular web framework and a suite of popular products so no doubt that he is a very productive and talented developer. However would he be the best person to choose if you wanted to do complex cryptanalysis or develop a high performance OS kernel?

What if you took someone who was skilled in these things and gave them David's job, would they be "the best" then?

I think it is this confusion that makes interviewers think they must ask complex math questions to interview someone who's day job will be to write code that generates HTML.

There also seems to some confusion that you are only elite if you use the latest and coolest tools, which leads to weird stuff like someone who made a web 2.0 social chat app in nodeJS being considered better than someone who designed and implemented a 6 nines reliability infrastructure system for a bank but who was building on top of legacy Fortran/Java/Oracle.

because it seems like half the time, companies are partially bought for the talent...so if you can get a much better developer it helps adds to the valuation.

but yeah quite often it seems like these companies with thousands of developers...could be run with a 20 times smaller team

So, you're saying that people are, in effect, building lottery tickets when they create start-ups? Is no one interested in building businesses anymore?

This how it works with VC funded companies, you either need to sell them or go public. The VCs need to get a return on their investment. Since there are only 1,000 companies or so going public per year, selling to another company is your best bet. And if you do that you might as well do so for the best possible price. I don't think this is bad per se.

A team of good programmers is valuable in its own right, unlike a lottery ticket.

How does a company being bought for talent work exactly? If I join a company that gets bought, how long am I usually legally obligated to work for the company that bought my current employer?

There are a number of issues at play here, but short answer, you are not legally obligated to work at all, you can leave any time.

With that said the issues involved are as such:

1. If you had equity in a company (and sometimes even if you don't) it is not uncommon to sign a non-compete contract as part of the sale that bars you from working for a competitor for about a year. 2. Often, much of the value of the sale for employees is structured as retention payments, i.e. they set up a number of bonuses that are spread out over a few years, and you need to work at the company for that duration to get those bonuses.

i think a lot of people like to talk about how they want the best, and it makes everybody feel good, and the 90%ers (already really good, top decile!) can't tell the difference between them and a 99.9er because they haven't seen one before. also, "goodness" is multi-dimensional which confuses the issue further, its much more than raw coding chops, business domain knowledge is often more valuable.

but it doesn't matter if people are unaware that they're not the best. software gets built, money is made, and people sort themselves into the type of job they're ready for. especially because ability to build a highly valued company is probably a seperate dimension of "goodness" than coding chops. and a more valued dimension.

There is a difference between want and need. 42Floors WANTS the best and brightest, but really only NEEDS solid players to be successful.

That said, if you only WANT for solid players, you usually end up with crappy ones.

You need the best and brightest so that you can say you have the best and brightest.

You say that you have the best and brightest so that you can say you have the best and brightest.