People I Hire

I've found myself explaining my hiring strategy a lot lately, so I thought it would be worthwhile to write it down.

I'm sure this strategy works well for software engineers on small teams, but I'm not sure how well it applies to other roles, so grain of salt.

Starting from first principles, I believe:

1. People do their best work when they are working on what they want to be working on.
2. I'm not a very good micro-manager. YMMV.

Taking these two ideas together, I've come to the conclusion that I can only hire A-players with high agency who are passionate about the work.

An A-player without agency needs micro-managed. A B-player with high agency needs micro-managed. It's as simple as that. I like working too much to micro-manage anyone.

So when we hire, we pass on anyone that's not extremely self-motivated and extremely competent. Sounds simple, but you'd be surprised how difficult it is to say "no" when we're slammed with work, and the candidate is "good" across all vectors. The big idea is to say no.