Not a surprising line of thought, considering the source. I have worked with some of HBRs products -- Harvard MBAs -- and found them to be arrogant and severely lacking in common sense. I don't know if Mr. Taylor is a graduate, but the attitude sure does sound familiar. To the Harvard MBAs I worked with, developers were viewed as janitors (making sure the software didn't stink too much) and completely interchangeable. Thy were incapable of distinguishing bad from good from stellar developers, and were therefore unable to recognize what a 100x developer brings to the table. Google and Facebook are not similarly disabled, and need to pay what the market will bear.
The choice between "a small number of superstars" and "a well-assembled team that may not dazzle with individual brilliance, but overwhelms with collective capability" is a false one. A "well-assembled team" will have a small number of stars and a larger supporting cast. A badly assembled team will have a huge number of leaderless, mediocre developers. This team will undoubtedly have "managers", who have little or no understanding of what they manage. Having spent many years in software startups, I have seen how one kind of group turns into the other. The stars build something. It becomes successful. Maybe its a startup that gets acquired. The B players and PHBs arrive. The stars get fed up and leave (to build something else from scratch), and what's left is a stagnant, rudderless, politicized, mediocre group that can no longer do anything innovative.
Mr. Taylor says "I'm not sure I'd make the same choice as Mark Zuckerberg -- especially if those 100 pretty good people work great as a team." That's why he's not Mark Zuckerberg.
The choice between "a small number of superstars" and "a well-assembled team that may not dazzle with individual brilliance, but overwhelms with collective capability" is a false one. A "well-assembled team" will have a small number of stars and a larger supporting cast. A badly assembled team will have a huge number of leaderless, mediocre developers. This team will undoubtedly have "managers", who have little or no understanding of what they manage. Having spent many years in software startups, I have seen how one kind of group turns into the other. The stars build something. It becomes successful. Maybe its a startup that gets acquired. The B players and PHBs arrive. The stars get fed up and leave (to build something else from scratch), and what's left is a stagnant, rudderless, politicized, mediocre group that can no longer do anything innovative.
Mr. Taylor says "I'm not sure I'd make the same choice as Mark Zuckerberg -- especially if those 100 pretty good people work great as a team." That's why he's not Mark Zuckerberg.