I think we've all came across people who chose technologies based on not what would be the best for the problem at hand + what they have the most experience with, but instead what is trendy today and can help them get hired in the future at the next workplace.

I'd probably describe that as "bad behavior" as you hire people believing they'll focus on improving things inside the company, inside of focusing on padding their CV. Of course, wouldn't be bad if it's both, but selecting the latter in front of the other seems non-optimal for the employer.

If you go through enough people like that, you end up with a ball of software spaghetti that anyone working on will struggle with, instead of a polished architecture ready to nimbly be changed when needed.

It sounds like you have never been in the position of e.g. establishing hiring protocols and used those not to get the best people into the company, but instead to ensure that no one who has the potential to outperform you gets hired.

At the IC level sure, it is your manager’s job to create alignment. At the hiring level pg is talking about, they are deciding which of those people to bring in, and they think about it in at least as much detail as you when you design the intricate functions of the next product you ship.

Think about it like this: you have the chance to build a product that wins every trial but you won’t get anything more in the process, or you can design a product that is less competitive and sends you personally $<meaningful_amount> every time it is trialed, whether or not they buy. Assume no one will ever be able to definitively prove which one you did.

It’s a balance. If you have people who only care about their career and not the company, you end up with misalignment. That’s why hiring people who are intrinsically motivated matters so much. People who demand personal growth without having proven themselves are likely less aware of the purpose of their employment. I’ve experienced this at companies where many people have only worked at late-stage, pre-IPO companies where neither the realities of early-stage or public markets exists.