Because the "talented" people are too busy being good at what they are talented at to notice that they are talented at the wrong things.
I started working at a corporate (my first) about a year ago. To my endless un-surprise, the people at the top are entirely people who are good at getting top jobs at large companies. And nothing else. Darwin must chuckle daily.
Darwin only stated that the fittest will survive. He didn't define a fitness function for founders/employees at startups.
You seem to be projecting a fitness function of "what's best for the company to run efficiently" when the fitness function of the employee is something closer to "maintaining employment (somewhere) and/or getting promoted".
Exactly. As a corollary, there are very few tigers, or whatever you consider to be the archetype of a highly evolved sleek apex predator that's fitter than everybody else. There are tons of dumb herd animals who are heavily rewarded by grass for just wantering around and preventing trees to grow and block it's sun
Again, fitness functions aren't predetermined (by Darwin or anyone else) and they aren't static. Apex predators aren't required. The mosquito is the most deadly animal for humans (due to the diseases they transmit). About 1/4 to 1/3 of all human pregnancies end in miscarriage (which rarely has anything to do with any predators).
My comment was intended to get people to think more broadly about what the components of the fitness function could be.
I was also trying to point out that the fitness function for an employee doesn't exactly match the fitness function for the company. The delta is most likely what the OP was inquiring about.
> tons of dumb herd animals who are heavily rewarded by grass
Or they are evolved to take advantage of the low interest rate environment and VC funding model (lots of money thrown at rapid growth businesses in funding rounds).
I started working at a corporate (my first) about a year ago. To my endless un-surprise, the people at the top are entirely people who are good at getting top jobs at large companies. And nothing else. Darwin must chuckle daily.