Talent density matters more than headcount

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

1. 1:38:16

   And that happens partly through the race to the top, partly through things like RSP, partly through, again, selected surgical regulation. You said talent density beats talent mass. So can you explain that? Can you expand on that? Can you just talk about what it takes to build a great team of AI researchers and engineers? This is one of these statements that's like more true every month. I see this statement as more true than I did the month before.

2. 1:38:43

   So if I were to do a thought experiment, let's say you have a team of 100 people that are super smart, motivated and aligned with the mission, and that's your company. Or you can have a team of 1000 people where 200 people are super smart, super aligned with the mission. And then like 800 people are, let's just say you pick 800 like random, random big tech employees, which would you rather have, right?

3. 1:39:10

   Right. The talent mass is greater in the group of in the group of a thousand people. Right. You have you have even even a larger number of incredibly talented, incredibly aligned, incredibly smart people. But but the issue is just that if. Every time someone super talented looks around, they see someone else super talented and super dedicated. That sets the tone for everything. Right. That sets the tone for everyone is super inspired to work at the same place.

4. 1:39:39

   Everyone trusts everyone else. If you have 1,000 or 10,000 people and things have really regressed, right, you are not able to do selection and you're choosing random people, what happens is then you need to put a lot of processes and a lot of guardrails in place just because people don't fully trust each other. You have to adjudicate political battles. There are so many things that slow down the org's ability to operate.

5. 1:40:05

   And so we're nearly a thousand people and we've tried to make it so that as large a fraction of those thousand people as possible are like super talented, super skilled. It's one of the reasons we've slowed down hiring a lot in the last few months. We grew from 300 to 800, I believe, I think, in the first seven, eight months of the year. And now we've slowed down. We're at like, you know, the last three months we went from 800 to 900, 950, something like that.

6. 1:40:34

   Don't quote me on the exact numbers, but I think there's an inflection point around a thousand and we want to be much more careful how, how we, how we grow, uh, early on. And, and now as well, you know, we've hired a lot of physicists, um, you know, theoretical physicists can learn things really fast. Um, uh, even, even more recently as we've continued to hire that. We've really had a high bar on both the research side and the software engineering side, have hired a lot of senior people, including folks who used to be at other companies in this space.

7. 1:41:05

   And we've just continued to be very selective. It's very easy to go from 100 to 1,000 and 1,000 to 10,000 without paying attention to making sure everyone has a unified purpose. It's so powerful. If your company consists of a lot of different fiefdoms that all want to do their own thing, they're all optimizing for their own thing, it's very hard to get anything done. But if everyone sees the broader purpose of the company, if there's trust and there's dedication to doing the right thing, that is a superpower.

8. 1:41:37

   That in itself, I think, can overcome almost every other disadvantage. And, you know, it's the Steve Jobs, A-players. A-players want to look around and see other A-players is another way of saying that. I don't know what that is about human nature, but it is demotivating to see people who are not obsessively driving towards a singular mission. And it is, on the flip side of that, super motivating to see that.