> it’s just hard to impossible to scale that The phrase “hire people smarter than yourself” is a platitude that is intended to foster an attitude, just a usefu

> it’s just hard to impossible to scale that The phrase “hire people smarter than yourself” is a platitude that is intended to foster an attitude, just a useful way of framing & thinking about people, mainly aimed at the manager, but has the byproduct of making ICs feel good about themselves. It’s not really a literal measurable specific requirement or goal. One way to see that nobody is taking it literally is that nobody is reporting IQ on their resume, and nobody is giving standardized IQ tests during job interviews. (And of course I mean statistically nobody, I’m not claiming that it’s never happened.) Often in hiring ‘smart’ doesn’t really mean smart anyway, it means wisdom, experience, attitude, skill, communication, knowledge, motivation, creativity, adaptability, friendliness, culture-fit, etc., there are many different ways someone can be ‘smarter’ than you on at least 1 axis of whatever ‘smart’ means, and it’s generally not hard to find them if we’re realistic about how smart we are on all axes.