> underqualified hires can somehow... breed other underqualified staff?
My experience is that underqualified hires kind of breeds more underqualified staff by the following process: more-qualified staff (QS) can't fix the messes done by the underqualified staff (US); QS gets overwhelmed with work requests (everyone wants QS on the job), its work becomes of lesser quality (effectively turninq QS into an overworked US); time passes and US gets more and more UNDERwhelmed with work requests and this affects QS's motivation to work (I work well, people put me to work a lot, and I can't take my vacations with my children because they put the payroll system under my responsability, etc... while Joe surfs the web the whole day, never leave one minute and a half past five and takes the whole July vacationing.) driving QS's work quality still further down, etc. etc...