Sorry, but this still sounds pretentious. The set of possible cofounders is a market like any other, and compensation is generally commensurate with value generated. Charisma and EQ are just as important, if not more, than generic technical skills for most businesses. There's obviously going to be exceptions such as when new technology is being created at the foundation of the business, but that is not the majority of startups.
Technical founders who don't have those skills need somebody who can handle it - and it's very valuable.
That's true. I suspect part of the problem there is lack of liability and therefore lack of willingness to pay for security. They're just going to lose the best security engineers to Google and Microsoft.
> What we do in software is not real engineering, not even close.
The only reason our processes and practices aren't much heavier is because the stakes are lower. People do not die if a Tweet doesn't make it through, but they do if a bridge collapses through.
The threat model is also significantly different. If we go back to the bridge analogy, a company like Microsoft has to deal with tens of thousands of people trying to blow it up or find some weakness every day, while a million people are going over it. Just by sheer laws of scale they are going to have a tougher time, Real Engineering or not.
Technical founders who don't have those skills need somebody who can handle it - and it's very valuable.