Hiring junior versus experienced developers at an early stage

@dblock, we talked briefly about this challenge, but I would appreciate you writing more formally about two things:

• Having a health distribution of junior/senior talent on an engineering team
• Hiring for long-term benefit (hiring for potential) versus hiring for immediate impact/output

Here's an example: if I have a startup that is built with Ruby on Rails, I'd like my engineers to know Ruby on Rails. However, I have the choice of hiring a junior dev who does not know Rails but who has a lot of potential or a more senior dev with Rails experience but who might not have much room to grow. While it's nice to hire talent and develop it, a startup does not have the time or resources to develop all of its talent. What distribution of hiring for talent versus output would be optimal?

I understand there might not ever be a clear choice or universal rule, but I'd love to hear your best practices or advice on this subject.

Issue #6 is the only entry point named; no file, test, or documentation location is provided. Use the issue body as the brief and research the two requested hiring topics, including the Ruby on Rails example. Done means a formal piece addresses both topics and acknowledges that there is no universal ratio.