Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
00:53:12 · Lenny Rachitsky, Adam Ward
[00:53:12] S0: Moving ourselves further down the funnel, what's the moment when you decide we're going to make this person an offer? Is there something that you look for specifically and/or just what's the process like a hiring committee meeting is something else? [00:53:25] S1: Yeah, we debrief as immediately as possible as a team. Each function has a little bit of a different hiring process of what that looks like, but we don't have hiring committees. It is hiring manager led. They get lots of input from the team. And remember the role of the hiring manager is, it's not a democracy. Hiring manager is holding that group accountable for helping them get them the right inputs to make out the right decision, to make the best decision, hire or no hire. And so we try to frame it in that way, making sure we get really good signal on it. So we try to move really quickly. So debriefing's typically same day, if not next day. And they make that decision, then that decision goes to the founders for stamping. [00:54:15] S0: Awesome. Okay. Then you get to the offer stage. There's a bunch of stuff here, but one is just there are many massive offers happening these days. Okay, so say you made an offer to one of these top 50 people and they're like, "Okay, but I also got this offer from Anthropic for a bazillion dollars." How do you handle that? And also just, is that super frustrating or is it like, "Oh wow, more signal, this person is incredible."
00:54:41 · Adam Ward
[00:54:41] S1: Yeah, I think it can be both. There's room for both. I think that the goal is to not be selling at the close. We're trying to sell throughout. And so if you think about the craft of recruiting, the craft of recruiting is upfront getting a really clear on this person's motivations and why they might make a move and for what. And then making sure that that entire experience hits to those pieces. So at the end is a culmination, not a start. It feels almost like a natural outcome of it where just like, "Oh, this is almost like this assumptive next step of, yeah, and here's the offer that we talked about all along." Versus starting the clock or starting the conversation on a close. I think we try to get back to those motivations. So we might think about how we would differentiate against Anthropic size wise or the role or the team or the people you work with. We really try to focus on the intrinsic things, not the extrinsic things, which is very hard to do when you're getting MBA players offers and salaries and sometimes bigger than that. But we really try to focus on people who want to be here. And often when people are thinking about their job search and what might be next, they maybe start with a set of things and we maybe help them discover other things along the way. And we might discover at the end that actually, this is not the right fit and that's okay. And we feel good about walking away from that. But often it's around helping them discover that actually maybe this is the right place through that journey.
00:56:30 · Lenny Rachitsky, Adam Ward
[00:56:30] S0: How often do people take a job that doesn't have the highest comp? Is that common or is that rare? [00:56:37] S1: Yeah, I think you're trying to mitigate comp as a reason people come or don't come. And often that means it's not the highest number. And I think we've all probably talked with people who maybe at some point in their career chase just the largest number. And I think what you realize six months in is that just becomes your new level of comp life, but you're not excited by the people you work with or the work you're doing. And so we try to mitigate that as a piece, but I think it happens a lot. And also rightfully so, we've probably lost people where maybe we were the highest one and they went somewhere else too. And if that's the right fit for them, this is going to sound a little polyannic, but I fundamentally believe there are right people for right companies at the right time. And if they discover at the end of that that we're not, that's the right call for them. And as a recruiter, if they're not the right fit, I literally have to redo that work in six months. I don't want to redo that work. I'd rather let's figure that out right now and have that more open conversation. [00:57:42] S0: You should build an agent that helps you decide and figure that out, which company is the right fit for me right now in this time because that sounds really valuable to check that price. [00:57:51] S1: That'd be super interesting.
00:57:51 · Adam Ward, Lenny Rachitsky
[00:57:51] S1: That'd be super interesting. [00:57:54] S0: Something that I've heard Anthropic does that I've never heard anyone do, similar to Tesla, they don't let you negotiate. They're just like, "Here's the offer." Do you feel like that's an only Anthropic thing that they could do because they're just Anthropic? Or is that something you think about? [00:58:10] S1: I mean, I've thought about it. I see over time different companies have done that. And I think what I respect about it is you make that call and you kind of stick with it and there's a commitment to it. But every company's different and I think the approach is... So I respect it. I think about it, but it may not be right for us. [00:58:32] S0: From the candidate's perspective, what are some mistakes that people make when they get an offer that shoot themselves in the foot?
00:58:32 · Lenny Rachitsky, Adam Ward
[00:58:32] S0: From the candidate's perspective, what are some mistakes that people make when they get an offer that shoot themselves in the foot? [00:58:40] S1: Generally, the advice I give to candidates is when you think about your offer and if you're negotiating, it has to just fit a line of logic. And so if you are asking for a certain piece of compensation or a certain other piece of it, is it rooted? Walk me through the logic behind it. I think that makes it easy for the person to understand, but also easy for them to communicate that forward to maybe a different decision maker as well. So I see candidates who are maybe a little bit all over the place on that, where early on it's this and now it's this and it's kind of the add-on type of thing versus a candid who's coming in of here's the four things that are important to me and being clear and consistent with it as much from the outset as you can. Not all things can be there at the outset. That makes it very logical and easy for the company to engage with that. [00:59:37] S0: Versus just finding random excuses for more comp. [00:59:41] S1: Correct. And I think what a company generally knows is we're intrinsically not their top choice. And so we're trying to win head and hearts here and we're not trying to buy that out. [00:59:58] S0: How just mind-blowing are these comps these days? I imagine you've seen so many.
00:59:58 · Lenny Rachitsky, Adam Ward
[00:59:58] S0: How just mind-blowing are these comps these days? I imagine you've seen so many. [01:00:03] S1: Yeah, I think it's all true and worse or higher. I think the open question, a lot of us AI companies are like, "How does it go from here? How does this end?" Nobody knows. But it does feel like the unit of measure that matters the most is the most fixed and finite, which is time. It is a race against the clock to get the model, the talent. And that is the thing that matters the most is the most precious. Clearly for some companies, there's more money and there's more other things, but time is the most fixed and important asset right here in this market. [01:00:48] S0: Just coming back to the AI researcher trend, it's crazy how these people used to be just off on the side building these AI models, ML models, not that exciting to anybody, and now they're the most in demand. [01:01:00] S1: And I remember I helped build out the research group at Facebook before... they'd just not hire PhDs, even advanced degrees really much at all. And this is 2010 or something. And I remember meeting just this set of academics really who were getting this growing frustration of their work, not ever making it outside of the halls of academia. And so I'm very excited for that population to have this moment. They've been arguably the underpinning of technical innovation for decades and they're having their moment and well-deserved. [01:01:51] S0: Kind of along those lines to close out the funnel of, let's call it the funnel of joy instead of the funnel of doom.