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Max Levchin

👤 Person
513 total appearances

Appearances Over Time

Podcast Appearances

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
20VC: Affirm Max Levchin on Why Grading Talent by Letter (A or B) is Total BS | How to Create a Culture of Post Mortems and Writing | Why You Should Only Study Failure Not Success & The Biggest Surprises Scaling to $18.7BN Market Cap

And so somebody coming in and telling you their life story, like, you know, they have watched probably an interview you conducted with someone who's a professional interviewer who was spelled out what it looks like when you're hiring an A player. You know, someone's going to be like, hmm, extreme personality is very important. Max Lovchin said so. How do I get myself more extreme? What I need.

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
20VC: Affirm Max Levchin on Why Grading Talent by Letter (A or B) is Total BS | How to Create a Culture of Post Mortems and Writing | Why You Should Only Study Failure Not Success & The Biggest Surprises Scaling to $18.7BN Market Cap

And so I don't think you can really judge A or B overall grade at hiring time. I think you can assess someone's coding ability, but a really, really good assessment test requires a take home because like you can implement quicksort on camera very quickly and but so can a C player these days.

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
20VC: Affirm Max Levchin on Why Grading Talent by Letter (A or B) is Total BS | How to Create a Culture of Post Mortems and Writing | Why You Should Only Study Failure Not Success & The Biggest Surprises Scaling to $18.7BN Market Cap

And so I don't think you can really judge A or B overall grade at hiring time. I think you can assess someone's coding ability, but a really, really good assessment test requires a take home because like you can implement quicksort on camera very quickly and but so can a C player these days.

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
20VC: Affirm Max Levchin on Why Grading Talent by Letter (A or B) is Total BS | How to Create a Culture of Post Mortems and Writing | Why You Should Only Study Failure Not Success & The Biggest Surprises Scaling to $18.7BN Market Cap

And so I don't think you can really judge A or B overall grade at hiring time. I think you can assess someone's coding ability, but a really, really good assessment test requires a take home because like you can implement quicksort on camera very quickly and but so can a C player these days.

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
20VC: Affirm Max Levchin on Why Grading Talent by Letter (A or B) is Total BS | How to Create a Culture of Post Mortems and Writing | Why You Should Only Study Failure Not Success & The Biggest Surprises Scaling to $18.7BN Market Cap

And so you have to give people a lot of time and giving people a lot of time, they will inevitably stray from the rules of whatever the test is. So anyway, the point is you can filter out C players. You can definitely filter out D players. Differentiation between B and A is what happens once you've brought them in. You go like, oh my God, that is a brilliant hire.

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
20VC: Affirm Max Levchin on Why Grading Talent by Letter (A or B) is Total BS | How to Create a Culture of Post Mortems and Writing | Why You Should Only Study Failure Not Success & The Biggest Surprises Scaling to $18.7BN Market Cap

And so you have to give people a lot of time and giving people a lot of time, they will inevitably stray from the rules of whatever the test is. So anyway, the point is you can filter out C players. You can definitely filter out D players. Differentiation between B and A is what happens once you've brought them in. You go like, oh my God, that is a brilliant hire.

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
20VC: Affirm Max Levchin on Why Grading Talent by Letter (A or B) is Total BS | How to Create a Culture of Post Mortems and Writing | Why You Should Only Study Failure Not Success & The Biggest Surprises Scaling to $18.7BN Market Cap

And so you have to give people a lot of time and giving people a lot of time, they will inevitably stray from the rules of whatever the test is. So anyway, the point is you can filter out C players. You can definitely filter out D players. Differentiation between B and A is what happens once you've brought them in. You go like, oh my God, that is a brilliant hire.

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
20VC: Affirm Max Levchin on Why Grading Talent by Letter (A or B) is Total BS | How to Create a Culture of Post Mortems and Writing | Why You Should Only Study Failure Not Success & The Biggest Surprises Scaling to $18.7BN Market Cap

And more often than not, you say, I thought there was going to be a great hire. It's a good hire. Like I'm happy. I'm happy we have them. And the question there is what do you do to get the absolute best work from this person? And will they have the Steve Jobs quote, A players hire A players, B players hire C players is profoundly true. There should be an asterisk explaining why this is true.

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
20VC: Affirm Max Levchin on Why Grading Talent by Letter (A or B) is Total BS | How to Create a Culture of Post Mortems and Writing | Why You Should Only Study Failure Not Success & The Biggest Surprises Scaling to $18.7BN Market Cap

And more often than not, you say, I thought there was going to be a great hire. It's a good hire. Like I'm happy. I'm happy we have them. And the question there is what do you do to get the absolute best work from this person? And will they have the Steve Jobs quote, A players hire A players, B players hire C players is profoundly true. There should be an asterisk explaining why this is true.

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
20VC: Affirm Max Levchin on Why Grading Talent by Letter (A or B) is Total BS | How to Create a Culture of Post Mortems and Writing | Why You Should Only Study Failure Not Success & The Biggest Surprises Scaling to $18.7BN Market Cap

And more often than not, you say, I thought there was going to be a great hire. It's a good hire. Like I'm happy. I'm happy we have them. And the question there is what do you do to get the absolute best work from this person? And will they have the Steve Jobs quote, A players hire A players, B players hire C players is profoundly true. There should be an asterisk explaining why this is true.

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
20VC: Affirm Max Levchin on Why Grading Talent by Letter (A or B) is Total BS | How to Create a Culture of Post Mortems and Writing | Why You Should Only Study Failure Not Success & The Biggest Surprises Scaling to $18.7BN Market Cap

And reason for it is fear. A players love working with other A players because they know the demands of the job and the team. dynamics just make them better. So you want to have people who challenge you and tell you, hey, I know you're an A player, but that just wasn't good. Let's go redo this together or you go redo it, whatever.

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
20VC: Affirm Max Levchin on Why Grading Talent by Letter (A or B) is Total BS | How to Create a Culture of Post Mortems and Writing | Why You Should Only Study Failure Not Success & The Biggest Surprises Scaling to $18.7BN Market Cap

And reason for it is fear. A players love working with other A players because they know the demands of the job and the team. dynamics just make them better. So you want to have people who challenge you and tell you, hey, I know you're an A player, but that just wasn't good. Let's go redo this together or you go redo it, whatever.

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
20VC: Affirm Max Levchin on Why Grading Talent by Letter (A or B) is Total BS | How to Create a Culture of Post Mortems and Writing | Why You Should Only Study Failure Not Success & The Biggest Surprises Scaling to $18.7BN Market Cap

And reason for it is fear. A players love working with other A players because they know the demands of the job and the team. dynamics just make them better. So you want to have people who challenge you and tell you, hey, I know you're an A player, but that just wasn't good. Let's go redo this together or you go redo it, whatever.

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
20VC: Affirm Max Levchin on Why Grading Talent by Letter (A or B) is Total BS | How to Create a Culture of Post Mortems and Writing | Why You Should Only Study Failure Not Success & The Biggest Surprises Scaling to $18.7BN Market Cap

And so A players just want to escalate away or accelerate away from the pack. B players frequently say, look, I'm a worker B and I know I'm not an A player and that's okay. I'm just going to grind out good code. art, sound, whatever. But some of them are fearful and say, well, if I have too many B players around it, let alone A players, I will look terrible.

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
20VC: Affirm Max Levchin on Why Grading Talent by Letter (A or B) is Total BS | How to Create a Culture of Post Mortems and Writing | Why You Should Only Study Failure Not Success & The Biggest Surprises Scaling to $18.7BN Market Cap

And so A players just want to escalate away or accelerate away from the pack. B players frequently say, look, I'm a worker B and I know I'm not an A player and that's okay. I'm just going to grind out good code. art, sound, whatever. But some of them are fearful and say, well, if I have too many B players around it, let alone A players, I will look terrible.

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
20VC: Affirm Max Levchin on Why Grading Talent by Letter (A or B) is Total BS | How to Create a Culture of Post Mortems and Writing | Why You Should Only Study Failure Not Success & The Biggest Surprises Scaling to $18.7BN Market Cap

And so A players just want to escalate away or accelerate away from the pack. B players frequently say, look, I'm a worker B and I know I'm not an A player and that's okay. I'm just going to grind out good code. art, sound, whatever. But some of them are fearful and say, well, if I have too many B players around it, let alone A players, I will look terrible.

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
20VC: Affirm Max Levchin on Why Grading Talent by Letter (A or B) is Total BS | How to Create a Culture of Post Mortems and Writing | Why You Should Only Study Failure Not Success & The Biggest Surprises Scaling to $18.7BN Market Cap

It will be very obvious that I'm just not that good. There are people here who are a lot better than me. So the way to fix this is for me to become a manager and for me to hire a bunch of people who aren't very good at all, like much worse than me. And then I'll look like the tallest mushroom and that'll be great. And so that is the real danger of B players.

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
20VC: Affirm Max Levchin on Why Grading Talent by Letter (A or B) is Total BS | How to Create a Culture of Post Mortems and Writing | Why You Should Only Study Failure Not Success & The Biggest Surprises Scaling to $18.7BN Market Cap

It will be very obvious that I'm just not that good. There are people here who are a lot better than me. So the way to fix this is for me to become a manager and for me to hire a bunch of people who aren't very good at all, like much worse than me. And then I'll look like the tallest mushroom and that'll be great. And so that is the real danger of B players.

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
20VC: Affirm Max Levchin on Why Grading Talent by Letter (A or B) is Total BS | How to Create a Culture of Post Mortems and Writing | Why You Should Only Study Failure Not Success & The Biggest Surprises Scaling to $18.7BN Market Cap

It will be very obvious that I'm just not that good. There are people here who are a lot better than me. So the way to fix this is for me to become a manager and for me to hire a bunch of people who aren't very good at all, like much worse than me. And then I'll look like the tallest mushroom and that'll be great. And so that is the real danger of B players.

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
20VC: Affirm Max Levchin on Why Grading Talent by Letter (A or B) is Total BS | How to Create a Culture of Post Mortems and Writing | Why You Should Only Study Failure Not Success & The Biggest Surprises Scaling to $18.7BN Market Cap

Having people who are perfectly willing to do good work day in and day out is not the worst thing in the world. There's plenty of things that A players will turn their nose from because it's just not that challenging. It's not accelerating them out of the APAC. And Bs are very, very good for that. And a lot of B players over time grind their way to being A players.