Where do the most capable people you know work?

[LongHaul]

Not sure what will come out of this question but sometimes strong performing employees end up at well run organizations because of cause and effect.

 

Which operating businesses do the most capable people you know work at?

Please DO NOT include investment funds.

[LC]

They tend to gravitate towards stable organizations because they understand the fragility of life and circumstance.

[Jurgis]

Not counting startups, most people who leave go to Alphabet and Amazon. But that's partially because of the field (tech) and location.

 

I am pretty sure if you asked people in Silly Valley they would have different answer by now. My friends from Alphabet say that people from there leave for ... some time ago it was Facebook, not sure right now.

 

If you invert, the place where great tech people leave from is IBM.

 

But that's all still limited and anecdotal. :)

 

Also "most capable" is a bit fuzzy. If you are talking about superstars, there's not that many of them and they do live their own lives, some staying in one place like Jeff Dean, some going through multiple places like Andrew Ng.

 

In the past there were also great people and great teams attached to dysfunctional companies/subs. Like Xerox PARC or Bell Labs in later years. There's possibly less of that nowadays, but I wonder if some of Alphabet's moonshot subs not gonna end up like that.

 

From articles Tesla and SpaceX seem also to be magnets for great people. I don't know people there though.

 

Edit: just to emphasize that "great people" does not necessarily mean great organizations, a lot of the great tech people worked at DEC and Sun through the nineties. It would have been a big mistake to invest in either... Maybe things have changed. ;)