Not trying to be difficult, but you're not really addressing my question.

Why can't you address this with mitigants I mentioned? It sounds like you do some of that with "other non-$ comp" (mandatory PTO, parental leave,...) that's use it or lose it, but those are table stakes these days.

I love the idea of thinking about a long term marriage and contracting accordingly, but at some point it's a leap of faith.

Your bias has a presumably unforced handicap. Losing that 100x programmer may not matter to your business/personal goals to make GOOD wealth accumulation, but it will hurt your changes to go from GOOD to GREAT outcomes.

That sounds very sensible, for some of the better kinds of companies.

How do you handle retention, once you "marry" an employee?

If the manager retired, would the company keep nurturing that?

great question. weeding out people up front that are not team players and job hop goes a loooooong way. once you immediately root that out the rest of it:

- great team

- competitive compensation

- maternity / paternity leave

- mandatory pto

Thanks. Sounds solid.

The compensation one is the one that most companies get wrong for retention. It seems most companies say they're "competitive" (within some unspecified tier). And they may be at hiring time, but a frequent complaint is that companies don't keep the compensation competitive. (Netflix famously being an exception.)