Month: May 2014

How to Hire Insecure Overachievers

mckinsey

“Our ideal candidate is an insecure overachiever.”

That’s what the McKinsey partner told me during my interview. Yeah, once upon a time I wanted to work at McKinsey & Co. They didn’t make me an offer. I was certainly insecure enough, but maybe not overachieving enough.

Not a secret: The people who go to work in management consulting and banking are insecure overachievers.

Insecure overachievers make great employees because they work long hours to win approval from authority figures. However, they are a very tricky species. They love prestige. They don’t like risk. They need social acceptance. Banking and consulting are not considered socially admirable professions these days, but remember – insecure overachievers don’t care what the 99% think. They need social acceptance from the 1% who matter.

They love structure and a clear path for advancement, but want to keep their options open. That’s the most important thing to an insecure overachiever: lots of options. It can never appear as though they have reached their final destination, because that would imply that they have exposed their maximum potential. As long as they appear to be in transition, they can claim to be holding out for something better.

The “up or out” policy instituted in law, consulting, and banking is perfect for insecure overachievers. Maybe McKinsey is just a springboard to an executive position at a Fortune 500 company, and Goldman is just a stop before partnership at a $50B hedge fund.

oce-tout-img

As Wall Street bankers migrate to Silicon Valley, they bring their hiring practices with them. Insecure overachievers could never admit that their final station in life is a shared desk at Facebook. That’s why Google recruiters often tout this selling point: The best part about working at Google is the job you can get after you leave Google.

Because insecure overachievers need Google on their resumes before they are ready to start the next billion-dollar company.

Google gives new hires teddy bears and security blankets.
Google gives new hires teddy bears and security blankets.

See Also:
How Wall Street recruits so many insecure Ivy League grads –Vox

Hard Things

I was having a lovely family dinner with my mommy and daddy and baby brother, who is in his first year of residency in Emergency Medicine .

My brother pulled out his iPhone. Wanna see what I do at work?

Not really, I said.

He offered up his phone anyway. On the screen was an x-ray image of a human pelvis. This patient came in to the ER last week, he said. He was 70 years old.

A shadowy cylinder floated above the gaping pubic bone.

What the hell is that??

A bottle, he said. I spent an hour and a half trying to pull it out. I finally had to send him to the OR.

AUGGHHHHHH, my mom said.

He was 70??

And I thought my job sucked.

Dr. Ou refused to email me the original image, so this is my best reproduction.
Dr. Ou refused to email me the original image, so this is my best reproduction.

It turned out that the attending physician later reproached my brother for waiting so long to send the patient to surgery. It shouldn’t have taken you 90 minutes to realize that this wasn’t working, the attending said. You wanted to avoid doing the hard thing.

Ah, the hard thing. Ben Horowitz writes all about Hard Things. He says that the two key characteristics that he and his partners look for when investing in entrepreneurs are brilliance and courage. The correct decision is often obvious, the hard part is having the courage to act on that decision. Sometimes it involves changing direction, sometimes it involves shuttering a company, sometimes it involves major surgery to remove an object lodged in an orifice.

Doing the easy thing incurs technical debt, management debt, and prolonged suffering. When in doubt, do the Hard Thing.

ben_horowitz

Experiences vs Commodities

ibox_billboard

Over 95% of Apple product owners keep the box their iThing came in. Did my Lenovo Thinkpad come with a box? I can’t remember. If it did, I recycled it for being brown and soulless.

The Apple box is a product itself. It even has a patent. But the Apple product starts before the box. Back in the store, with the glass staircase spiraling a great glass elevator. That’s what the Apple product is: an experience.

apple-store-glass-staircase-ideas

Making a phone call or connecting to the internet can be commoditized. Any Android device will get you there. I wouldn’t be able to pick a Galaxy or Nexus out of an Android police lineup.

All Look Same
All Look Same

Samsung and Google make commodity products. Substitutable, fungible, replaceable. A commodity has no qualitative differentiation within its class, so consumers will buy the cheapest version. To avoid commoditization, build an experience.

Lyft, a taxicab, and a Greyhound bus are all ways to get from Point A to Point B, but only one is an experience.

The Apple iBox is not just a box. It’s a satin-finished white cradle presenting the physical embodiment of cool. The user instantly feels like he’s gonna get laid. Now that’s something that can’t be commoditized.

See Also:
Apple and Nike –stratechery