PayPal的Max Levchin聘請(qǐng)到最好的工程師的訣竅

譯者：張?zhí)K月

關(guān)鍵詞：PayPal，Max Levchin，聘請(qǐng)人才

編者按：美國(guó)在線交易平臺(tái)PayPal于上月剛剛發(fā)布了其第三季度的營(yíng)收?qǐng)?bào)告，收益增長(zhǎng)強(qiáng)勁，比2015年第三季度增長(zhǎng)了18%，并且在Facebook Messenger上推出新的支付功能，同時(shí)完成了與Bitcoin公司的合作。之所以能夠取得這么豐富的成績(jī)，其創(chuàng)始人之一Max Levchin認(rèn)為這是與其好的團(tuán)隊(duì)是分不開的，而好的團(tuán)隊(duì)則是由優(yōu)秀的人才組成的。本文中Max Levchin講述了自己招聘好的工程師的一些訣竅，這或許對(duì)很多創(chuàng)業(yè)公司來說值得借鑒。

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在硅谷歷史上，Max Levchin曾經(jīng)建立、管理和投資了一些最強(qiáng)的技術(shù)團(tuán)隊(duì)。雖然他聘請(qǐng)工程師的方法有時(shí)看起來令人難以理解，但結(jié)果很棒。在第一輪CEO峰會(huì)采訪中，Max分享了PayPal 和 Slide吸引和留住優(yōu)秀人才的哲學(xué)，這與通常所講不同。?

一、有疑問才是最無可置疑的?

一個(gè)公司最初幾個(gè)員工的招聘過程將會(huì)是創(chuàng)始人做出最重要的決定。這些員工未來幾年將塑造企業(yè)文化和企業(yè)前景，并且不能被輕易改變。在 PayPal，Levchin的宗旨是堅(jiān)決不能做出錯(cuò)誤的招聘，并且他強(qiáng)烈地堅(jiān)持意見統(tǒng)一的聘請(qǐng)過程。如果團(tuán)隊(duì)中的一個(gè)人不喜歡某個(gè)候選人，那么他們就不會(huì)聘請(qǐng)此人。?

Levchin繼續(xù)共享到，“坊間有一些關(guān)于我的荒誕的故事，說我不聘請(qǐng)某些人是因?yàn)樗麄冊(cè)诿嬖嚠?dāng)中使用了錯(cuò)誤的詞…我相信我們有很多漏報(bào)，但是我們有很少的誤報(bào)?！辈贿^，寧可在招聘的時(shí)候失去一個(gè)超級(jí)巨星，也比聘請(qǐng)一個(gè)會(huì)破壞或毀滅公司的人強(qiáng)。電影Ronin里面的一句話用在這里非常合適，“有疑問才是最無可置疑的?！?/span>?

二、招聘優(yōu)秀人才的關(guān)鍵?

在PayPal，Levchin和早期的團(tuán)隊(duì)通過引進(jìn)一些他們所熟知的人來減少那些令人苦惱的聘請(qǐng)決策。PayPal的前10個(gè)工程師和Levchin共同學(xué)習(xí)進(jìn)步。前五個(gè)業(yè)務(wù)員工來自斯坦福大學(xué)Peter Thiel的朋友網(wǎng)。雖然有簡(jiǎn)歷篩選、嚴(yán)格的面試以及LinkedIn資料等等這些良好的招聘渠道，但是經(jīng)過多年的摸索，PayPal團(tuán)隊(duì)認(rèn)為招募到一個(gè)合適的人最簡(jiǎn)單的方式是本來就知道這個(gè)人是很棒的。?

圖：早期的PayPal團(tuán)隊(duì)，Levchin位于最后一排左邊。?

眾所周知，你不可能從你的交際圈中挖掘到足夠多的優(yōu)秀人才來構(gòu)建整個(gè)團(tuán)隊(duì)。雖然在某些方面確實(shí)如此，但Levchin的經(jīng)驗(yàn)是，幾乎每個(gè)人實(shí)際上所認(rèn)識(shí)的優(yōu)秀人才比自己心里所想的要多。挑戰(zhàn)在于，大多數(shù)創(chuàng)業(yè)者排除了頂尖人才，因?yàn)樗麄冋J(rèn)為自己永遠(yuǎn)無法真正讓這類人才加入自己的團(tuán)隊(duì)。?

Levchin在早期就學(xué)會(huì)了不要去犯這個(gè)錯(cuò)誤。PayPal成立時(shí)，他靜下心來創(chuàng)建了一個(gè)錄取候選人的列表。他每建立一行列表都會(huì)寫一個(gè)名字。Levchin回憶起，“Peter Thiel讓我坐下，然后他讓我親手寫下我在大學(xué)里所知道的每一個(gè)聰明的人。結(jié)果我們完成了一個(gè)大約30人的名單，最終聘請(qǐng)了其中的大約24個(gè)人。”?

你不能僅僅因?yàn)檎J(rèn)為自己不可能聘請(qǐng)到某個(gè)人而排除任何一個(gè)潛在的被聘請(qǐng)者。他繼續(xù)指出，“我們這叫級(jí)聯(lián)效應(yīng)，在這種效應(yīng)下我們團(tuán)隊(duì)的每個(gè)人將被迫寫下他們所知道每一個(gè)聰明的人，而這些人是他們絕對(duì)相信自己不可能聘請(qǐng)到的。然后我就像妖怪一樣纏著這些人，直到他們最終妥協(xié)。”?

三、思想的多樣性是前進(jìn)速度的阻礙劑?

對(duì)早期創(chuàng)業(yè)公司來說，速度是你最有價(jià)值的武器。總會(huì)有一些大公司，他們擁有更多的工程師，設(shè)計(jì)師，更多產(chǎn)業(yè)范圍以及更多的資源。但是掌握好速度，你仍然可以比他們更快的到達(dá)目的地，這是你的競(jìng)爭(zhēng)優(yōu)勢(shì)。那么問題就來了：創(chuàng)業(yè)公司如何盡可能快的前進(jìn)呢？?

我們都認(rèn)識(shí)到，單獨(dú)工作是最有效的操作方式。它讓每個(gè)人在做同一件事的時(shí)間最小化，降低通信成本，而且關(guān)于產(chǎn)品愿景沒有任何爭(zhēng)議。畢竟，你只有自己去面對(duì)這些。然而,由于大多數(shù)產(chǎn)品相當(dāng)復(fù)雜，所以組建團(tuán)隊(duì)成為必然，而組建速度的關(guān)鍵之一是早期階段與小團(tuán)隊(duì)堅(jiān)持團(tuán)結(jié)一致。?

從這個(gè)意義上來說，思想的多樣性在早期團(tuán)隊(duì)中可以成為速度的抑制劑?！叭绻阕屓藗?nèi)プ咴L五個(gè)不同門類計(jì)算機(jī)科學(xué)的學(xué)校，一組把Java作為他們的主要語言并且很喜歡它，另一組喜歡PHP，而第三組則確信PHP是很難讓人理解的語言，而Python這種設(shè)計(jì)語言則是美麗的，那么此時(shí)你只有準(zhǔn)備一場(chǎng)無休止的辯論賽了。”?

當(dāng)一個(gè)軟件團(tuán)隊(duì)浪費(fèi)一天的時(shí)間討論使用哪個(gè)版本的Python時(shí)，那就已經(jīng)失去了討論的優(yōu)勢(shì)。這并不是說，Python的使用版本并不重要。只是對(duì)于早期創(chuàng)業(yè)公司來說，選擇合適的工具在絕對(duì)意義上并沒有正確的工具那么重要，而且只要人們知道工具是如何使用的就行了。?

思想的多樣性在一個(gè)公司生命的后期階段是最有價(jià)值的。Levchin說，“當(dāng)你進(jìn)入一個(gè)未知的領(lǐng)域，你沒有任何知識(shí)背景的時(shí)候，你需要那些與你與眾不同的人的觀點(diǎn)。在這一點(diǎn)上，思想的多樣性是非常有價(jià)值的?！边@聽起來非常容易，但維持這種平衡是很困難的。?

四、讓你的公司與眾不同?

Levchin認(rèn)為，最好的工程師對(duì)于工作和面試過程都希望具有挑戰(zhàn)性。“我們給公眾留下了這樣一種印象：想要進(jìn)入PayPal工作非常難。盡管實(shí)際上進(jìn)入面試都很難，但我們傳播了這樣一個(gè)觀點(diǎn)：就像進(jìn)入PayPal一樣，這確實(shí)非常難。首先，你必須有190的智商，也就是說很聰明，然后你必須是一個(gè)了不起的程序員，最后是其他五個(gè)要求。真正聰明的人看了看這些要求，說：“這是一個(gè)挑戰(zhàn)。我要去面試，只是想要給這些傻瓜證明，我比你們更好”。當(dāng)然，談話結(jié)束，我會(huì)說，“也許你想在這里找一份工作因?yàn)槟愫芰瞬黄??！?/span>?

Levchin的經(jīng)驗(yàn)教訓(xùn)?

在我們的談話中，Levchin說出了他的整個(gè)職業(yè)生涯中最大的一些錯(cuò)誤。他的教訓(xùn)可以總結(jié)如下:?

道德和信任不是基于百分比的游戲。一個(gè)人在某些點(diǎn)上不能達(dá)到99%。但其誠(chéng)信或許可以達(dá)到這么高。?

每個(gè)人都記得美好的時(shí)光。而恰恰是那些不好的時(shí)光，我們搞砸的時(shí)光是應(yīng)該被記住的?！拔覍W(xué)到的最大的教訓(xùn)之一傷害大的事情一旦發(fā)生了就要寫下來記住?！狈駝t，一年以后，你就會(huì)忘記，就會(huì)再次犯同樣的錯(cuò)誤。?

最后想說：“我沒有花很多時(shí)間在早期的時(shí)候定義公司的文化?！碑?dāng)一個(gè)創(chuàng)業(yè)公司始于過分寬松的文化，那么它以后就很難變得嚴(yán)格。也就是說，過些時(shí)候慢慢地放寬企業(yè)文化比試圖執(zhí)行嚴(yán)格的企業(yè)文化要容易的多。?

The Trick Max Levchin Used to Hire the Best Engineers at PayPal?

http://firstround.com/review/the-trick-max-levchin-used-to-hire-the-best-engineers-at-PayPal?utm_source=wanqu.co&utm_campaign=Wanqu+Daily&utm_medium=ios?

Max Levchin has built, managed and invested in some of the strongest technical teams in Silicon Valley history. While his approach to hiring engineers can be unorthodox at times, his results are undeniable. In this First Round CEO Summit interview, Max shares insights on the unconventional hiring philosophies that PayPal and Slide implemented to attract and retain great people.?

Doubt = No Doubt?

The first few hires at a company are the most important decisions a founder will ever make. These hires will shape company culture and vision for years to come and can’t easily be undone. At PayPal, Levchin was religious about not making the wrong hire and believed strongly in a unanimous hiring process. If one person on the team didn’t like a candidate, they wouldn’t make the hire.?

Levchin shared, “There are some legendary-ish tales of me not hiring people because they used the wrong word in an interview… I’m sure we had lots of false negatives, but we have very few false positives.” It’s better to err on the side of losing a superstar here or there than make a hire that’ll disrupt or ruin a company. A quote from the movie Ronin puts it perfectly, “Whenever this is any doubt, there is no doubt.”?

There are some legendary-ish tales of me not hiring people because they used the wrong word in an interview.?

The Trick to Hiring Great People?

Levchin and the early team at PayPal limited the number of agonising hiring decisions by bringing in people they knew. The first 10 engineers at PayPal went to school with Levchin. The first five business hires came from Peter Thiel’s network at Stanford. While resumes, rigorous interviews and LinkedIn profiles provide a good proxy, the most foolproof way to recruit a good person is to know, over years of interaction, that the person is great.

Early PayPal team – Levchin is in the back left.?

It’s easy to think you can’t possibly know enough good people from your network to build out an entire team. While in some ways that’s true, Levchin’s experience is that almost everyone actually knows more good people than they believe they know. The challenge is that most founders rule out top talent because they think they’ll never be able to actually get them to join their team.?

Levchin learned early on not to make this mistake. When PayPal was founded, he sat down and created a list of potential engineering hires. When he was done he had a single name written down. Levchin recounts demoralizing exercise, “Peter [Thiel] sat me down and he made me write down every smart person I knew in college personally. Turned out to be a list of about 30 people and we ended up hiring about 24 of those.”?

You can’t rule potential hires out just because you don’t think you can win them. He went on to note, “We had this cascading effect where our team would be forced to write down everybody smart they knew that they were absolutely confident they could never hire. We then went after them like banshees and they would eventually crack.”?

Diversity of Thought Can Slow You Down?

At an early-stage startup, speed is your most valuable weapon. There are always bigger companies that have more engineers, more designers, more distribution and generally more resources. But with the requisite speed, you may be able to get there faster — it’s your competitive advantage. The question becomes: How can a startup move as fast as possible??

We all recognize that working solo is the most efficient way to operate. It minimizes the amount of time spent getting everyone on the same page, reduces communication costs to zero and there aren’t any disputes about product vision. After all, you only have yourself to contend with. However, since most products are sufficiently complex that forming a team is a foregone conclusion, one of the keys to generating speed is by holding on to the magic of the early days with small teams.?

In this sense, diversity of thought in an early-stage team can be an inhibitor of speed. “If you have people that went to five different computer science schools and one group knows Java as their primary language and loves it, and the other group loves PHP, and the third group was convinced that PHP is the work of the devil and Python is beautiful, you’re just going to have debates.”?

The moment a software team wastes a day debating which version of Python to use, it has lost it’s nimble edge. That’s not to say that the version of Python used isn’t important. It’s just that for an early-stage startup, the right tool in the absolute sense is less important than the right tool for the people in the room — it is always the tool people know how to use in that very moment.?

Diversity of thought is most valuable at later stages of a company’s life. “As you get into the uncharted territory where you don’t actually have any intellectual background you need perspectives from people that are very different from you. At that point, it’s actually quite valuable to have people that are diverse.” Levchin shares. It sounds obvious, but maintaining this balance can be difficult.?

Make Your Company Different?

Levchin realized the best engineers wanted to be challenged both in their jobs and in the interview process. “We cultivated a very public culture of being incredibly hard to get in. Even though it was actually very hard to get good people to even interview, we made a point of broadcasting that it’s incredibly hard to even so much as get into the door at PayPal. You have to be IQ of 190 to begin with, and then you have to be an amazing coder, and then five other requirements. The really, really smart people looked at it and said, ‘That’s a challenge. I’m going to go interview there just to prove to these suckers that I’m better.’ Of course, by end of the conversation, I’m like, ‘Maybe you want to come get a job here because you’re pretty amazing.'”?

Levchin’s Lessons Learned the Hard Way?

Throughout our conversation, Levchin peppered in some of the biggest blunders throughout his career. The lessons he learned can be summed up here:?

Ethics and trust are not percentage-based games. A person cannot be 99% there. Trustworthiness is either there or it’s not.?

Everyone remembers the good times. It’s the bad times, the time we screw up, that are tough to remember. ”O(jiān)ne of the greatest lessons I learned is write down the things that hurts the most as soon as it happens.” Otherwise, in a year, you’ll forget and make the same mistakes again.?

”Fuck up #1 at Slide: I did not spend a lot of time defining the culture of the company early on.” When a startup begins with an excessively lax culture, it is difficult to become strict later on. It’s always easier to relax it later on than try to retroactively enforce a stringent company culture.

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