So, hiring was possible, especially if people are willing to give away proper equity. At this point, I know what my next asking price, were it an employee position, would be--and sure, I expect haggling. The problem was that the fit wasn't good enough (for a few different reasons) to justify making it happen.

There's a lot involved in hiring--not just technical aptitude, not just "does this person work with your engineering team?", not just "do we runway for this person?". There's also "does this person work with everyone in the company?", "do we value this person enough to give up equity to manage the salary differential?", "do we really need this person's skillset right now, or can we get by?" and many others.

If I had my druthers, we'd hemorrhage out equity and cash to hire the best--the very best--and retain them by working on inspiring projects and helping them grow and help others grow into the best engineers the world has seen since Bell Labs in the mid 70s. Life is too fucking short not to focus on building awesome things with awesome people.

Alas, that's kind of what Apple tried in the late 80s, early 90s, and it basically cost them the company until they were finally able to pay NeXT to acquire them.

There are sad, annoying practicalities in running a business, and sometimes that changes hiring practices from the ideal. :(

EDIT:

The real issue is that the Internet has made it trivial to look at greener grass everywhere, and see how raw a deal one might be getting. Not good for morale, even at decent firms (such as mine).

Worse, it means that hiring from local good schools is a pain in the ass because the graduates are all tuned to Google or Facebook or {{latestFundedSVStartup.compPackage}}. Unless you make it clear to them in an interview that no, they aren't actually worth 80k unless they can hit the ground running, they'll just say "lol, whatevs, I'll go elsewehre". Whether or not they get hired there is not important...I probably won't see them again (even with prodding from emails).

We'll never see the true fallout of that side of the bubble, I think, but I suspect it's pretty rough.

EDIT2:

Just to clear up any misunderstandings: I'm the first engineering hire here, so while I handle a lot of team stuff and whatnot, final hiring authority does not rest with me. I'm not the one deciding whether we can afford a new hire--I just try to find good ones and get them interested.

EDIT3:

Removed "and genuinely do not deserve their asking price" from bit about students. Deserve was wrong word to use--better phrasing would've been "their asking price is based on a market which is not ours".

The problem being, of course, that the standard reference market is SV as popularized by HN and other channels, not whatever their local market is.