I think the real issue is that people assume that the success of the company depends on the quality of the employees. This isn’t true, what dominates is the match between consumer and product. And you simply can’t predict the market that well, that’s the benefit of capitalism.
In software, the product is built by the employees. It would be weird if the quality of the product (abstractly and in product-market fit) were entirely divorced from the quality of the employees.
I see it slightly differently; I think that 95% of the success of companies is driven by key moments or decisions by 5% or less of the work. (That’s usually by a similarly small slice of the workers as well.)
