I like the quote but I think people throw it around far too loosely. It seems to be an impossibility or else every company founded by A class people (assumption: there must be at least SOME such companies) would only ever consist of A class people, but that clearly isn't the case. For sake of argument let's assume Google, Facebook and Microsoft (and likely many, many others) were all founded by A class people. Do these companies consist solely of A class people? If not someone, somewhere, must have hired a non A class person, thus the hirer themseves couldn't have been A class by the original statement. You can apply the recursive argument here eventually terminating in the founders :)
EDIT: Add Apple to the list of companies with (obvious) A class level founding teams. Funny oversight on my part since the quote is from Steve Jobs himself :)
The rest of the aphorism is: A-class people hire A-class people, but B-class people hire C-class people. Point being A-class people look for the best, B-class people look for someone further down on the food chain.
The more accurate way to phrase it is "it takes A class talent to hire A class talent." the implication being it is not a guaranteed thing. Bs and Cs are also capable of hiring As, but it is often random luck.
I like the quote but I think people throw it around far too loosely. It seems to be an impossibility or else every company founded by A class people (assumption: there must be at least SOME such companies) would only ever consist of A class people, but that clearly isn't the case. For sake of argument let's assume Google, Facebook and Microsoft (and likely many, many others) were all founded by A class people. Do these companies consist solely of A class people? If not someone, somewhere, must have hired a non A class person, thus the hirer themseves couldn't have been A class by the original statement. You can apply the recursive argument here eventually terminating in the founders :)
EDIT: Add Apple to the list of companies with (obvious) A class level founding teams. Funny oversight on my part since the quote is from Steve Jobs himself :)