Should companies hire for extreme individual strength in one area (accepting accompanying weaknesses), or seek well-rounded competence?

Jean-Denis Greze · Jul 21, 2023

Getting hired at Dropbox was the speaker's lucky break: despite an unconventional background and doing poorly on half the interviews, two people there saw something in him and advocated for hiring him

Two interviewers pushed to hire him despite him failing half the interviews, because his weirdness and spikes were what the company needed

3:45 20VC: Why Hiring in Tech is Broken and Founders Need to be as Good at Firing as they are Hiring, Why Product Differentiation is Unsustainable & Why the Current Generation of Tech Employees are Entitled and What Needs to Change with Jean-Denis Greze @ Plai

David Vélez · Sep 11, 2023

Hiring should be assessed on character traits and what drives a person rather than career experience, and candidates with very strong strengths alongside very strong weaknesses make more powerful hires than people who are merely good at everything

Being asked his opinion in Sequoia's investment committee as an intern gave him a level of motivation he'd never felt in any previous role; being asked for a view creates skin in the game and prepares people

Scope: acknowledges it is a lot of work; applies even in large organizations

8:19 20VC: Lessons Building Nubank to the Largest Neobank in the World, How AI Changes The Future of Finance, Leadership Lessons from Sequoia's Doug Leone & What European and US Fintech Can Learn From LATAM with David Velez, Founder @ Nubank

Brian Halligan · Jan 15, 2024

Hiring panels systematically pick the candidate with uniformly mediocre scores over the candidate with a mix of top and low scores, and you are usually better off with the spiky candidate

You want a spiky team where people have great strengths and great weaknesses that spike in different directions, rather than a lowest-common-denominator team

Scope: about scale-up VP-level hires evaluated by interview panels

38:39 20VC: Hubspot Co-Founder Brian Halligan on Leadership Lessons Scaling Hubspot to a $28BN Market Cap | The Best Series A Investment in Venture History & What Makes Sequoia so Successful?

Harry Stebbings · Jan 15, 2024

LPs should back managers with extreme profiles — terrible at responsiveness but capable of transforming a company — rather than uniformly competent ones

The extreme profile is the kind of manager worth getting behind

Scope: framed as advice to LPs on manager selection

39:56 20VC: Hubspot Co-Founder Brian Halligan on Leadership Lessons Scaling Hubspot to a $28BN Market Cap | The Best Series A Investment in Venture History & What Makes Sequoia so Successful?

Chris Dixon · Mar 27, 2024

You should invest in strength, not lack of weakness — in hiring as well as in portfolio companies — hiring people with a special ability even when it comes bundled with issues, over well-rounded but unexceptional people

Venture capital is the exception business, in investing and in hiring, and the bundled issues are things you can work through

Scope: framed as a firm framework learned from Marc and Ben

48:12 20VC: a16z's Chris Dixon on Who Will Win the Next Generation of Venture, The Two Ways to Make Great Venture Investments and Find the Best Entrepreneurs & Why AI Will Strengthen the Position of the Incumbents Moving Forward

Max Levchin · Feb 5, 2025

You mostly do want brilliant people with extreme personalities on your team — truly brilliant people are worth the quirks

The quirks come bundled with the brilliance, and a good manager can bring out the best in people even when they're extreme; the real question is just how extreme and what it costs if they blow up

Scope: depends on how extreme the personality is; requires assessing the cost if the person goes into a behavioral tailspin

4:38 20VC: Affirm Max Levchin on Why Grading Talent by Letter (A or B) is Total BS | How to Create a Culture of Post Mortems and Writing | Why You Should Only Study Failure Not Success & The Biggest Surprises Scaling to $18.7BN Market Cap

Fabien Pinckaers · Feb 12, 2025

If you hire for people who are good at everything you get people who are average at everything; you should hire for extreme strength and accept the accompanying weaknesses

People who transform a company have to be extremely good at something, and demanding all-round competence filters for averageness — so interview debriefs should ask what the candidate is exceptional at, not list their gaps

Scope: some weaknesses still cannot be accepted

36:02 20VC: The $5BN Company Built from the Belgian Countryside | The Story of Odoo: The Company with No Plans to Sell, IPO & Their Billionaire Founder Who Does Not Care About Money with Fabien Pinckaers, Founder & CEO @ Odoo

Sri Batchu · Jul 26, 2023

Focusing on your strengths is defensible on skills, but in growth you still need people willing to move into areas where they lack knowledge, rather than staying in their own lane

Growth is such an interdisciplinary field that intellectual curiosity across domains is required

23:01 Growth roles require willingness to work outside ones strengths despite a general strengths focus

Fabien Pinckaers · Feb 12, 2025

Which weaknesses are acceptable depends on the department's ability to accommodate them, not on a universal standard

Some departments are extremely flexible — an unsociable person can be given a separate office

36:54 Acceptable weaknesses depend on departmental flexibility not a universal standard