Pinning this on product is IMO a mistake. Most companies don't understand the discipline of performance management; they don't care to learn beyond asking people "hey how did you do OKRs?"; and they substitute organizational design for performance management. This can show up in many ways, including substantially delegating the entire fate of the business to product management.
Also, I've found it a lot easier to reason about organizational issues if you don't fixate so much on "great people." More and more people enter the workforce with the idea of competence as a "ladder" being firmly ingrained in their heads. It doesn't work that way; people succeed as a function of who they are and the environment they're in. Your "smart person" is often totally useless somewhere else (see, for example: the huge numbers of FAANG-ish employees that struggle to do anything in smaller companies, and vice-versa.)
I found this entire article to read like it comes from the heyday of "only associate with people as _great_ as you want to be", which I think (a) was terribly reasoned and (b) hasn't really worked out that great, especially for the people who followed this advice.
Also, I've found it a lot easier to reason about organizational issues if you don't fixate so much on "great people." More and more people enter the workforce with the idea of competence as a "ladder" being firmly ingrained in their heads. It doesn't work that way; people succeed as a function of who they are and the environment they're in. Your "smart person" is often totally useless somewhere else (see, for example: the huge numbers of FAANG-ish employees that struggle to do anything in smaller companies, and vice-versa.)
I found this entire article to read like it comes from the heyday of "only associate with people as _great_ as you want to be", which I think (a) was terribly reasoned and (b) hasn't really worked out that great, especially for the people who followed this advice.