I found it amusing, and do think that it can feel like there is a secret guild sometimes. However, there is a more interesting truth hidden in there.

People talk. Not really too surprising but Silicon Valley, like Hollywood, or Washington D.C., or any community being warped by a common theme, is at its heart people. And I don't know it if it part of our genetic heritage or what, but many people love to talk about other people, and so there is the undercurrent of a social fabric (made more visible by LinkedIn or Facebook but its the same fabric).

What Hollywood, Silicon Valley, and Washington DC share is a very low viscosity when it comes to job change. People move around, some move around a lot, and so the stories of people, and opinions about people, move with them.

Finally there is an external valuation that gets applied to folks, that is part who they are, what they are doing, what they have done, and who they have helped or hindered.

This isn't rocket science, but its good to be aware of it if you're working here, or thinking of working here because it can and does affect how you experience things.

So a new college graduate goes to work for a company. They come to know the people around them, and may develop opinions about their relative value to the company. After a few years they move on. The next company is looking for help and they ask you to 'reach out to your network' meaning "Let's see if we can poach the 'good' people from your previous job." This cycle repeats ad-infinitum.

Within that repeating cycle you will discover a truth which I learned from Bob Lyon at Sun which is this "There are no bad employees, only bad fits" which you may or may not believe, but it is true, that people who perform poorly in one environment can be superstars in another. And the flip side is "There are no good employees, only good fits." which is a scarier thing. At some point you will experience hiring some person who was a superstar at X and they join your company/group and don't get anything done.

Over time, and we're talking decades, you find people who are good to very good in most environments, and those who are poor to very poor in most environments. The latter tend to move on (either out of the valley or into different roles), the former become 'targets' for being recruited.

The interesting aspect though is that someone has done well in a wide variety of roles, that usually means there are lots of people who know them from interacting with them. Further they often know others who are good in a wide variety of roles. Sometimes it seems like there is a secret society somewhere, but there isn't.

When you encounter this phenomena for the first time, you might feel like they are a secret guild, folks who know the other 'good' people who can get things done. And yes, they can demand, and get, a higher than nominal salary (see today's front page story on 'pay'). But that comes from the probability they will do well, regardless of their role.

Three things to take away from this:

1) If you think your co-worker is a 'loser' consider they may just be in a bad role, if your managing them put them into a different role to see if they are better.

2) Track records can only be created over time, so don't worry that you're not 'a superstar' in 3, 5, even 10 years. Get to know people, try different things, test your own boundaries.

3) Recommendations and criticisms of someone by a former co-worker who has only seen the subject in one role, can be misleading. It only tells you about them in that one role. If several people have worked with a candidate in different roles and you are getting feedback that is both 'great' and 'skip this one' consider the roles at the time and weight based on your proposed role.