> The real challenge is that those employees tend to fly under the radar. The people quietly doing the important work and shipping things that Just Work can be overshadowed by bombastic, highly opinionated “rockstar” engineers. Founders need to be willing to let those rockstars go when they no longer benefit the company, no matter how good their coding skills might be in isolation. A coordinated team of mediocre but diligent engineers will run circles around a chaotic team of rockstars competing against each other.

So much this. The bombastic Rockstars not only create unnecessary ego driven political fights that are distractions to a business delivering value, but on the occasions they do deliver, it’s often not what was promised. But their social skills (or privilege) allow them to cruise through failures.

Whereas a team of devs that work well together that are hungry to learn, willing to have an open minded conversation about systems, that deliver consistently: they are what really keep the business from falling apart.