Monday Musings - Monday Musings (Street View Smarts)

Hi friends,

Greetings from Austin!

At Write of Passage, we started the year with three full-time employees and now we’re on the brink of making our 20th hire. To achieve that, we’ve gone on an insane hiring spree over the past few months. We've looked at more than 1,500 candidates. I've interviewed more than 50 of them.

When I saw that Elon Musk personally interviewed all of the first 3,000 people who joined Space X, I decided to do the same thing. Nobody can become a full-time team member without my stamp of approval.

The challenge is that, when you're hiring people (especially from big companies), it can be hard to know who actually contributed and who trailed behind the work of others like a race car trying to conserve energy. For example, did Google's former marketing director coast behind an unstoppable product or take charge inside the company?

In all those conversations, here's the hiring heuristic I've found most valuable: Good people speak in specifics.

​Reality has a surprising amount of detail. When you ask good people about their experiences, they'll speak with a level of depth and specificity you didn't even know existed (this heuristic also works for non-fiction writers because the best ones are detail wonks).

It's like Google Maps. Zoomed out map views are useful, but don't tell you much about life on the streets. Look for people with "Street View Smarts" instead. When somebody gives a zoomed out answer, what do you do? Ask a question that zooms the conversation into Street View to see if they know what they’re talking about.

No matter how charismatic, beware of people who can only speak in lofty abstractions.

Photo of the Week

The founding team for Write of Passage Liftoff (our program for high schoolers) is in town this week. I snapped this shot of us planning the inaugural curriculum, which is 80% based on the flagship Write of Passage program, and 20% adapted to appeal to high schoolers.

We're running a three-week version of Liftoff in parallel to the current Write of Passage cohort, and we still have a few spots available. If you or someone you know is a curious, driven high schooler who wants to write online, click here, and we’ll share further details.

If you're interested in hearing about the Liftoff program as we launch it, click here.