The Taxi Cab Math
The best cab driver in Manhattan gets you across town in 15 minutes. The worst takes 30. That is a 2x difference.
The best cook versus the worst cook? Maybe 3x. These are normal professions with normal talent gaps.
In software, the gap between best and worst is 100x. Between good and great, it is 50x. That changes everything.
In most fields the talent gap is 2-3x. In software it is 50-100x.
Only A-Players
Jobs made it his personal mission to keep only A-players. He considered it one of the few things he could contribute as a leader.
Not strategy. Not vision. Not product design. His number one job was maintaining the quality bar for people.
When you understand the 50x math, talent curation becomes the most important thing a CEO does.
Jobs believed his number one job was maintaining the talent bar.
The Painful Part
Letting people go is brutal. Jobs admits this freely. It is the hardest part of running a company.
But he found that his job was sometimes exactly that. Removing people who did not measure up.
He tried to do it with respect. But it had to be done. The 50x math demands it.
It is never fun. But the 50x math demands it.
The Compounding Effect
One great engineer does the work of fifty good ones. Now imagine a team of ten great engineers.
This is how Apple built world-changing products with small teams. Not by hiring more people. By hiring the right people.
Go after the best people in the world. It pays for itself fifty times over.
Apple built world-changing products with small teams of A-players.