&gt; When everyone has a runway of 18 months, spending the time and money to nurture talented people isn&#x27;t feasible whatsoever. You need productive people on day 1.<p>Day productivity is a mirage.  <i>Nobody</i> is productive on day 1 unless they were already somehow working with your organization and understand your processes[1], team dynamics, and whatnot.<p>&gt; Yet, the author&#x27;s company is full of white males in their 20&#x27;s and 30&#x27;s...<p>You must be seeing something on that page I am not.  In fact, it looks more diverse to me than the typical Valley start-up.<p>&gt; It sounds like the author wants other people, with other capital to invest in the hard part of what he&#x27;s suggesting to be solved.<p>That is a huge leap to make from a few pictures on an about page.<p>&gt; For the record, Google brings in 1,500 interns per year. That&#x27;s a pretty significant investment in talented people who many not necessarily be productive...(hint: they take a lot of Stanford CS undergrads) of which many will eventually take full time jobs there when they graduate. I&#x27;ve tried to hire these people and they are extremely difficult to attract when the alternative is a cushy job at Google.<p>So, there&#x27;s a shortage of Stanford CS grads who interned at Google.  What about the hundreds of thousands of grads who didn&#x27;t go to Stanford or intern at Google?  How many of them have you interviewed?<p>[1] Of course, it is my firm belief that much of the angst in Valley hiring is that companies don&#x27;t want to actually pay attention to things like process and organization and so try to hire a bunch of self-organizing rockstars to compensate.