Johanna

I am willing to take as much time as needed between projects to find my next thing. But I always want it to be a project that, if successful, will make the rest of my career look like a footnote.

One of the best ways to build a network is to develop a reputation for really taking care of the people who work with you. Be overly generous with sharing the upside; it will come back to you 10x. Also, learn how to evaluate what people are great at, and put them in those roles.

I call this the deluge of crappy papers. A recent article in Nautilus comes up with a more visually-arresting term - “zombie science”. This is apt, because zombies eat brains. Zombie science also consumes brains, or specifically, brain’s attention. Scientist’s time is one of the most precious resources we have and more and more is being wasted... See more

“Our guiding philosophy is that hiring is really just a search for alignment,” says Reeves. “Companies don't convince people to join them, and candidates don't convince companies to hire them. Both parties are searching for alignment to figure out, ‘Can we go do something great together?’”

I'm talking about hiring people who are serious about constant learning. These people don't spend their time trying to convince you of how much they know. They don't focus on their past very much. They are always focused on their future. As you interview them, they are interviewing you, trying to figure out how much they can learn from you.

You can get to about the 90th percentile in your field by working either smart or hard, which is still a great accomplishment. But getting to the 99th percentile requires both—you will be competing with other very talented people who will have great ideas and be willing to work a lot.

Reflexivity is at work in talent markets as well. (...) No prospect is more attractive to a 10x engineer than working with other 10x engineers, and no opportunity is more irresistible to an investor than funding a team of 10x engineers.