I think it's on HN because such salaries will hunt talented or not even good engineers down and if this happens it could be a really hard time for startups. Let's be real for a second without engineers ideas are worthless and if all of those good ones are at big companies which gives a out a lot of cash what can you do as a startup? I don't it is bad as it sounds but it could be tough and it could kill a lot of startups in future if this attitude by big companies grows.
In the contrast: you don't have to start your company in the Valley to be good and maybe it can save you a lot of headaches and money to not do so.
But at the end the source of this problem is different: the Valley just needs more engineers to get things rolling.
It's absolutely correct that technical ideas are worthless without effective implementation. That said, I strongly suspect that the current crop of startups, as a consequence of being overcapitalized by the current bubble, are also over-staffing their engineering teams. You don't need a dozen developers to write a me-too photo sharing app.
I would go a little deeper and so that you just need those who are really thrilled about what they are going to create. They need to believe into what they doing. Those are the ones who make the difference.
I'm really curious about how far this game will go.
In the contrast: you don't have to start your company in the Valley to be good and maybe it can save you a lot of headaches and money to not do so.
But at the end the source of this problem is different: the Valley just needs more engineers to get things rolling.