The problem of thermocapillary (Marangoni) convection in a layer of viscoelastic liquid is considered. The stability boundary for this problem has been previously calculated in various cases by a number of authors. Here attention is fixed on the magnitude of the growth rate in the parameter regime corresponding to instability. Two noteworthy features are pointed out. First, there are anomalously large values of the growth rate at or near the limiting special case of a Maxwell fluid. Second, the complex values of the growth rate (corresponding to overstability, or the onset of instability via oscillatory motion) coalesce into real (positive) values at moderately supercritical values of the Marangoni number, suggesting that overstability might be elusive to observation.