by Lora » Thu Feb 17, 2005 8:29 pm
One word: money.
Young, inexperienced workers are cheap. Cheap, cheap cheap. They will work for peanuts.
The rationale that my ex-bosses used was this: Everything they do has to be written as a highly detailed protocol anyway, per regulations. They can hire one or two moderately experienced people to do this part, people who are probably not highly skilled but deal well with steep learning curves. For the remainder, they can hire a bunch of bright technicians. This, at least, was the R&D directors' idea.
There is another motivating factor for not hiring the best and brightest in any field: you don't want to hire your replacement, do you? If you hire someone at the top of their game, who is extremely smart and experienced, you're essentially hiring your replacement or your future boss. It's not in your interest to participate in your own demise. Remember also, a young turk in a new position is not going to ask for things like family time off, occasional afternoon golf games or 40-hour workweeks--things that older, more experienced workers tend to take for granted.
It's very political. One of my engineering friends commented that everywhere he'd been, scientists were all astoundingly bad at office politics. I think this is broadly true, although undoubtedly Dave could beat us all at the human chess game of management manipulation.