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Something I found very interesting was Peter's comment: "You try to hire people you could become friends with." I contrast this with Zuckerberg's approach to on

Something I found very interesting was Peter's comment: "You try to hire people you could become friends with." I contrast this with Zuckerberg's approach to only hiring people that he would work for (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-leadership/wp/2015/03/05/mark-zuckerbergs-hiring-secret/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-leadership/wp/2015/03...). It's probably not fair to put these side-by-side due to context, but Peter's approach resonates with me now. Here's how I reconcile this: Peter's "friends" concept is about the long-term effect on yourself (and your team around you). Mark's "work-for" concept is about putting the very best people around you to build and operate a company. They could certainly co-exist, depending on your personality. Mark's approach (for me) makes great sense on paper, but Peter's approach comes with the value of been-there-done-that. Both have their place, but over the long haul, I can really appreciate what Peter is talking about.

brador 11y ago
I see it as Peter saying hire for culture, Mark saying hire for talent.
- sergiosgc 11y ago
  The answer is, as always, somewhere in the middle. I reconcile both thinking of culture as an hygienic condition, and talent as an order winner. Explaining: if the culture is poor, talent will go unused (it is irrelevant); if culture is good, talent gets used and only then does it make sense to try and hire the best talent.
- xasos 11y ago
  That's how I took it as well. I remember reading from Max Levchin (?) that a company should hire people exactly like them, culturally, early on. This helps reduce unnecessary conflict when the only thing you're focused on is growth. A prime example is why early startup employees come from the same school as the founders. I think later on, bigger companies focus on talent and culture equally (for the most part).
  - kybernetikos 11y ago
    Hiring people culturally similar may sounds sensible in theory, but it may not be sensible in practice. I haven't seen stats on startup hiring, but I read this about investment, which in my opinion stands a good chance of having a similar effect: http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/7069.html http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/7069.html "The probability of a successful exit outcome decreases by 18 percent if two venture capitalists who previously worked at the same company partner up in the syndication. The likelihood of success drops by 22 percent if co-investors attended the same undergraduate school. The negative effect of shared affinity is even stronger when it relates to ethnicity: Collaborating with someone from the same ethnic minority group comes at the expense of a 25 percent reduction in performance."
    - prodigal_erik 11y ago
      Maybe investors are more properly skeptical about dumb opportunities proposed by someone with a dissimilar background. Founders and employees have a much greater need to work together day-to-day and trust each others' judgment.
      - kybernetikos 11y ago
        It's certainly plausible. I can tell a plausible story from the other side though - the primary feature of being a start up is learning, and if it's an echo chamber you're going to be learning the wrong things and relying on things other than facts to dictate your business strategy.
- jroseattle 11y ago
  I agree with this summarization as well. What's implicit in both of these (IMHO), is that the type of friends Peter Thiel looks for will naturally be talented. And likewise for Mark, where someone he respects enough to consider working for is likely someone he would befriend. Big assumptions, but those guys are in the type of position where that's likely a reliable expectation.
TheCowboy 11y ago
A mantra like this has great appeal because who wouldn't want to hire their friends? But many hiring decisions are already biased with this in some way. Hiring is still a hard and unsolved problem. It seems that him saying that you try to hire people you could become friends with is opaque. How does he determine someone he would be good friends with? Do they have to share the same political views and hobbies? Without more info, it is hard to not view this as: Hire people Peter Thiel could be friends with. The main advantage of hiring people you would be friends with is that at least you feel comfortable with them even if they're not an optimal hire. It is almost like admitting you don't have a solution to finding good workers, so if you get a bad hire, at least you get along with them.
kens 11y ago
"Try to hire people you could become friends with" seems like a really bad idea from the discrimination point of view, since people are most likely to view someone of the same race, age, and gender as a potential friend.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- gaius 11y ago
  Regardless of gender or ethnicity, if everyone you hire is a 20-something graduate of the same top-10 CS programmes what you get is... Google+ (or Wave or Buzz...) Diversity means you don't get trapped in an echo chamber.
  - formulaT 11y ago
    or maybe it means you get Gmail, Google Web Search, Google Apps, Android and Chrome. Seems like you are using very selective evidence there, or selectively attributing only unsuccessful products to lack of diversity.
  - ThomPete 11y ago
    Wave was not by a 20-something but by a 40-something. Age has nothing to do with that (the 40-something that lead Wave also created Maps)
    - eru 11y ago
      And Wave was pretty cool. As a startup it might have even succeeded.
- wiggumz 11y ago
  "You try to hire people you could become friends with" is a profoundly stupid maxim. People who come from conservative and religious societies will always be pressured by friends to not make new friends who are of different ethnicities. Thiel is basically ensuring each company Will become a little Island of segregation and this is what I have seen in the bay area: companies that are 90% Indian, 90% Chinese, or 90% white guys.
smileysteve 11y ago
> Mark's approach (for me) makes great sense on paper, but Peter's approach comes with the value of been-there-done-that. Keep in mind that Mark only briefly "worked for" anybody in high school and college, and most of these were contracting positions. In a way, the only example of people he wouldn't "work for" that we know about is the Winklevosses after he decided to "stop working" on "their idea"
lukasm 11y ago
If you combine those two you have PG's advice: "Learn a lot about things that matter, then work on problems that interest you with people you like and respect."
sfgc 11y ago
If you're not interested in being friends with a person of a certain gender/race/whatever then you probably wouldn't want to work for them either.
crdb 11y ago
I read it differently. There's two ways to deal with trust: 1. you can try and hedge yourself against employees doing bad things. Like quitting for the competition or passing information. In this model, employees are paid mercenaries and none are crucial to the company. This is favored by corporations as it is good risk management. 2. you only hire people whose values align with yours, and where one strong shared value is sticking together. The prisoner's dilemma is a good framework to see why either can work. 1. assumes defect/defect, which results in poor but positive outcomes. Corporations are inefficient, but they are profitable. You keep good people by paying them more than the competition, not by building trust and values-based friendship. 2. is cooperate/cooperate, which results in large positive outcomes for as long as you can maintain it, but the first breach of trust (the first instance or even possibility of a defect) results in a catastrophic negative outcome. For example, if you're having a few rough months and your CTO - who built 80% of the site and is the only one who understands the data model - leaves for a better paid job. This is part of why it is so rare for more efficient upstarts to win against large corporations in their own market - by the time they get big enough, the startup looks too much like a corporation to maintain its cooperate/cooperate environment. Where things get interesting is Andreesen's "Software Eating the World" essay. Some companies have recently surfaced (Instagram, Whatsapp, most hedge funds) where a small number of people highly trusting each other have managed to scale the outsize outcome to corporation levels. And I think this is what Thiel is trying to say (or at least what he makes me think about): if your co-founders are practically "family", you might be more likely to go down that path. Whereas Zuckerberg prefers playing it safe, and assuming people will defect and scaling his company accordingly - especially since there is no shortage of capital to keep the best.

brador 11y ago

I see it as Peter saying hire for culture, Mark saying hire for talent.

sergiosgc 11y ago
The answer is, as always, somewhere in the middle. I reconcile both thinking of culture as an hygienic condition, and talent as an order winner. Explaining: if the culture is poor, talent will go unused (it is irrelevant); if culture is good, talent gets used and only then does it make sense to try and hire the best talent.
xasos 11y ago
That's how I took it as well. I remember reading from Max Levchin (?) that a company should hire people exactly like them, culturally, early on. This helps reduce unnecessary conflict when the only thing you're focused on is growth. A prime example is why early startup employees come from the same school as the founders. I think later on, bigger companies focus on talent and culture equally (for the most part).
- kybernetikos 11y ago
  Hiring people culturally similar may sounds sensible in theory, but it may not be sensible in practice. I haven't seen stats on startup hiring, but I read this about investment, which in my opinion stands a good chance of having a similar effect: http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/7069.html http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/7069.html "The probability of a successful exit outcome decreases by 18 percent if two venture capitalists who previously worked at the same company partner up in the syndication. The likelihood of success drops by 22 percent if co-investors attended the same undergraduate school. The negative effect of shared affinity is even stronger when it relates to ethnicity: Collaborating with someone from the same ethnic minority group comes at the expense of a 25 percent reduction in performance."
  - prodigal_erik 11y ago
    Maybe investors are more properly skeptical about dumb opportunities proposed by someone with a dissimilar background. Founders and employees have a much greater need to work together day-to-day and trust each others' judgment.
    - kybernetikos 11y ago
      It's certainly plausible. I can tell a plausible story from the other side though - the primary feature of being a start up is learning, and if it's an echo chamber you're going to be learning the wrong things and relying on things other than facts to dictate your business strategy.
jroseattle 11y ago
I agree with this summarization as well. What's implicit in both of these (IMHO), is that the type of friends Peter Thiel looks for will naturally be talented. And likewise for Mark, where someone he respects enough to consider working for is likely someone he would befriend. Big assumptions, but those guys are in the type of position where that's likely a reliable expectation.

TheCowboy 11y ago

A mantra like this has great appeal because who wouldn't want to hire their friends? But many hiring decisions are already biased with this in some way. Hiring is still a hard and unsolved problem. It seems that him saying that you try to hire people you could become friends with is opaque. How does he determine someone he would be good friends with? Do they have to share the same political views and hobbies? Without more info, it is hard to not view this as: Hire people Peter Thiel could be friends with. The main advantage of hiring people you would be friends with is that at least you feel comfortable with them even if they're not an optimal hire. It is almost like admitting you don't have a solution to finding good workers, so if you get a bad hire, at least you get along with them.

kens 11y ago

"Try to hire people you could become friends with" seems like a really bad idea from the discrimination point of view, since people are most likely to view someone of the same race, age, and gender as a potential friend.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
gaius 11y ago
Regardless of gender or ethnicity, if everyone you hire is a 20-something graduate of the same top-10 CS programmes what you get is... Google+ (or Wave or Buzz...) Diversity means you don't get trapped in an echo chamber.
- formulaT 11y ago
  or maybe it means you get Gmail, Google Web Search, Google Apps, Android and Chrome. Seems like you are using very selective evidence there, or selectively attributing only unsuccessful products to lack of diversity.
- ThomPete 11y ago
  Wave was not by a 20-something but by a 40-something. Age has nothing to do with that (the 40-something that lead Wave also created Maps)
  - eru 11y ago
    And Wave was pretty cool. As a startup it might have even succeeded.
wiggumz 11y ago
"You try to hire people you could become friends with" is a profoundly stupid maxim. People who come from conservative and religious societies will always be pressured by friends to not make new friends who are of different ethnicities. Thiel is basically ensuring each company Will become a little Island of segregation and this is what I have seen in the bay area: companies that are 90% Indian, 90% Chinese, or 90% white guys.

smileysteve 11y ago

> Mark's approach (for me) makes great sense on paper, but Peter's approach comes with the value of been-there-done-that. Keep in mind that Mark only briefly "worked for" anybody in high school and college, and most of these were contracting positions. In a way, the only example of people he wouldn't "work for" that we know about is the Winklevosses after he decided to "stop working" on "their idea"

lukasm 11y ago

If you combine those two you have PG's advice: "Learn a lot about things that matter, then work on problems that interest you with people you like and respect."

sfgc 11y ago

If you're not interested in being friends with a person of a certain gender/race/whatever then you probably wouldn't want to work for them either.

crdb 11y ago

I read it differently. There's two ways to deal with trust: 1. you can try and hedge yourself against employees doing bad things. Like quitting for the competition or passing information. In this model, employees are paid mercenaries and none are crucial to the company. This is favored by corporations as it is good risk management. 2. you only hire people whose values align with yours, and where one strong shared value is sticking together. The prisoner's dilemma is a good framework to see why either can work. 1. assumes defect/defect, which results in poor but positive outcomes. Corporations are inefficient, but they are profitable. You keep good people by paying them more than the competition, not by building trust and values-based friendship. 2. is cooperate/cooperate, which results in large positive outcomes for as long as you can maintain it, but the first breach of trust (the first instance or even possibility of a defect) results in a catastrophic negative outcome. For example, if you're having a few rough months and your CTO - who built 80% of the site and is the only one who understands the data model - leaves for a better paid job. This is part of why it is so rare for more efficient upstarts to win against large corporations in their own market - by the time they get big enough, the startup looks too much like a corporation to maintain its cooperate/cooperate environment. Where things get interesting is Andreesen's "Software Eating the World" essay. Some companies have recently surfaced (Instagram, Whatsapp, most hedge funds) where a small number of people highly trusting each other have managed to scale the outsize outcome to corporation levels. And I think this is what Thiel is trying to say (or at least what he makes me think about): if your co-founders are practically "family", you might be more likely to go down that path. Whereas Zuckerberg prefers playing it safe, and assuming people will defect and scaling his company accordingly - especially since there is no shortage of capital to keep the best.