Johanna

If you don't hire originals, you run the risk of people disagreeing but not voicing their dissent. You want people who choose to follow because they genuinely believe in ideas, not because they’re afraid to be punished if they don’t. For startups, there's so much pivoting that’s required that if you have a bunch of sheep, you’re in bad shape.

So I think efforts like Hoel’s to find the One Thing That Went Wrong in producing geniuses are doomed to fail. But even if I’m wrong, aristocratic tutoring isn’t that One Thing: there are too many counterexamples.

There are four key steps to the Feynman Technique:1. Choose a concept you want to learn about2. Explain it to a 12 year old3. Reflect, Refine, and Simplify4. Organize and Review

Don’t hire for the sake of hiring. Hire because there is no other way to do what you want to do.

At a deep level, meeting inflation is about the outdated expectation that all office work ought to be synchronous, or happening at the same time for everyone. Meetings require synchronicity: Everybody be present now. But most white-collar labor can be at least somewhat asynchronous. We send emails and chats that don’t require an immediate response.... See more

I still read through every scorecard and every offer going out at Gusto. The reason it’s still viable to do that in an hour is because the interview information is all brought together and packaged in an organized and consolidated way.”

Treat your values as articles of faith. Screen candidates for these values and be willing to let an otherwise good candidate go if he is not a cultural fit.