From Intelligence, Energy, and Integrity.

Inevitably, the most useful qualities have nothing to do with IQ, grades, or family connections. People pick based on generosity, kindness, and integrity.

“You’re looking for three things, generally, in a person,” says Buffett. “Intelligence, energy, and integrity. And if they don’t have the last one, don’t even bother with the first two. I tell them, ‘Everyone here has the intelligence and energy—you wouldn’t be here otherwise. But the integrity is up to you. You weren’t born with it, you can’t learn it in school.”

From How to Fail

17. “I know more than anyone else.” Instead: If you think you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re the fool.

If you are indeed the smartest person in the room, then you’ve picked the wrong people to work with. If you’re not the smartest person in the room but think you are, then you’re simply (usually disastrously) wrong.

Hire people smarter than you. Work with people smarter than you. Listen to them. Let them lead you. Take the blame for all failures, give away the credit for all successes.

19. Hire resumes. Instead: Hire people: curiosity, passion, interpersonal skills and drive.

Who would you rather work with: a resume or a person?

Remember that resumes are naturally biased, created and carefully manipulated by job-seekers as marketing devices.

Hire people you want to work with based on the traits, characteristics and behaviour you see. It takes more time to hire people rather than resumes, but the risk and downside of hiring a poorly-suited person is higher than the downside of an empty position.

21. Reward activity. Instead: Reward achievements, both failures and successes.

Failure is an inevitable by-product of an innovative company, thus it’s important to reward people’s failures along with their successes. Ending a project can be as valuable as pushing forward, since misguided activity wastes resources, time and people’s passion.

While process is important, remember that are results that count. Academic exercises (efforts that will never be executed) are called “academic” for a reason.

From Lex Fridman x Mark Zuckerberg

• Mark: The most important decision you’re probably gonna make in college is who you surround yourself with because You become the people you surround yourself with. . I have this hiring heuristic at Meta, which is that I will only hire someone to work for me if I could see myself working for them. Not necessarily that I want them to run the company, but like in an alternate universe, if it was their company and I was looking to go work somewhere, would I be happy to work for them?

Don’t hire people who have never failed at anything.

Steve Jobs @ MIT 1992 - Take a longer-term view of people.

I now take a longer-term view of people.

When I see something not being done right, my first reaction isn’t to go fix it, it’s to say “we’re building a team here and going to do great stuff for the next decade, not just the next year, and so what do I need to do to help so that the person who’s screwing up learns? versus how do I fix the problem?”