What Will Larson thinks about hiring
Engineering executive who has led infrastructure and engineering organisations at Stripe, Calm, Carta and Imprint, and previously at Uber and Digg. Author of "An Elegant Puzzle", "Staff Engineer", "The Engineering Executive’s Primer" and "Crafting Engineering Strategy". Writes about organisational design at lethain.com.
Will Larson did not write this page.
We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.
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4 dated positions, 2016 to 2018, in their own words. Our reading of what Will Larson has said — not written or endorsed by them.
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Their wordsWhen falling behind, the system fix is to hire more people until the team moves into treading water.
↗Staying on the path to high performing teams.lethain.com 1st of 6 in this piece
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Their wordsMany folks try to move all teams at the same time, peanut buttering their limited resources, but resist that indecision-framed-as-fairness: no one getting anything is not a fair outcome.
↗Staying on the path to high performing teams.lethain.com 5th of 6 in this piece
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Their wordsAdding new folks to a team disrupts that team’s gelling process, so I’ve found it much easier to have rapid growth periods for any given team followed by consolidation/gelling periods where the team gels.
↗Staying on the path to high performing teams.lethain.com 6th of 6 in this piece
- 20 months earlier
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Their wordsthis is where the oft raised concern that hiring is slowing us down comes from: at high enough rates, the marginal added value of hiring gets very slow, especially if your training process is weak.