You Don’t Need Superstar Developers
It depends so much on what you&#x27;re building.  If you&#x27;re doing _groundbreaking_ research in, say, AI or facial recognition or whatever, you may need people who are technical superstars.<p>If you&#x27;re building the average CRUD-plus-workflow application, the last thing you want are superstars who are going to get bored with routine work.  Then they&#x27;ll go off over-engineering some minor feature or spending weeks at a time inventing some algorithm you don&#x27;t need instead of building the product you do need - just to keep themselves from going stir crazy.<p>What you really want are people who are technically not outstanding but quite capable and have very strong soft skills.  People who can work well as part of a team; people who mentor and learn well; people who follow through on their tasks; people who not only can, but want to understand your product and business so they can make small decisions independently and well as they work; people who are good at prioritizing their own work; people who are good at identifying risk and knowing when it&#x27;s worth the time to address; people who are good at communicating with both teammates and management.<p>Although you might argue that people with several or all these qualities are rare enough to be superstars in their own way, they&#x27;re not superstars in the sense often discussed in forums like HN.