Following the crowd, the hiring process, and multi-disciplinary learning

Welcome back to the Z Fellows newsletter! Every Monday we share 3 ideas - to help you build companies, ship products, and create your life's work.

1: Sam Altman on Following The Crowd

"Most people do whatever most people they hang out with do. This mimetic behavior is usually a mistake—if you’re doing the same thing everyone else is doing, you will not be hard to compete with.

The best way to become difficult to compete with is to build up leverage. For example, you can do it with personal relationships, by building a strong personal brand, or by getting good at the intersection of multiple different fields. There are many other strategies, but you have to figure out some way to do it.”

Source: How to Be Successful

2: Marc Andreessen on The Hiring Process

First, have a written hiring process. Whatever your hiring process is—write it down, and make sure everyone has a copy of it, on paper.

Second, do basic skill tests.

For example, test programmers on basic algorithms—linked lists, and binary searches. And it’s such a breath of fresh air when you get someone who just goes, oh yeah, a linked list, sure, let me show you. For a sales rep—have them sell you on your product all the way to a closed deal. For a marketing person—have them whiteboard out a launch for your new product.

Third, plan out and write down interview questions ahead of time.

I do this myself—always enter the room with a list of questions pre-planned—because I don’t want to count on coming up with them on the fly. The best part is that you can then iteratively refine the questions with your team as you interview candidates for the position.

Fourth, pay attention to the little things during the interview process.

You see little hints of things in the interview process that blow up to disasters of unimaginable proportions once the person is onboard. Person never laughs? Probably hard to get along with. Person constantly interrupts? Egomaniac, run for the hills. Person claims to be good friends with someone you know but then doesn’t know what the friend is currently doing? Bullshiter.

Fifth, pay attention to the little things during the reference calls.

“Sometimes wasn’t that motivated”—the person is a slug, you’re going to have to kick their rear every morning to get them to do anything. “Could sometimes be a little hard to get along with”—hugely unpleasant. “Had an easier time working with men than women”—raging sexist.

Sixth, fix your mistakes fast… but not too fast.

Source: How to hire the best people you’ve ever worked with

3: On Multi-Disciplinary Learning

“If you want to be a better designer, don’t study design books. Study sculpture. Study paintings. Stuy cars, watches, philosophers, movies, fiction, music, people. Study the world.” — Tobias van Schneider

“I think learning should be about learning the basics in all the fields and learning them really well over and over. Life is mostly about applying the basics and only doing the advanced stuff in the things that you truly love and where you understand the basics inside out.” — Naval Ravikant

“You must know the big ideas in the big disciplines and use them routinely – all of them, not just a few.” — Charlie Munger

Source: Dear young designer

See you next Monday,

- Jay + The Z Fellows Team

New here?

Subscribe here to get our email every Monday.