What makes Moneyball a fascinating example is neither Brad Pitt's star-power nor Michael Lewis's writing. Baseball is an optimal canvas for finding market inefficiencies because everything is tallied and tracked. We can ascertain after the fact who ultimately did add value to their organizations.

In this case, the author argues what Billy Beane argued, "if we think like the Yankees in here, we will lose to them out there." If non-FAANG companies compete for the same prospective employees as FAANG employees, they will lose to vastly superior compensation packages. Fair enough.

So the question, which traits are analogous to on-base-percentage? Take the FAANG-hire-resume, then subtract features (e.g. lose the top-10 university credential, remove a couple years of experience, ditch the years with a trendy package, etc). Which decreases the hiring cost the most with the smallest loss of long-term value to the hiring company? What data set would track/measure this and what could be deployed as a proxy?