Rauch: Conceptual understanding helps leaders separate storytellers from real technical executors
Guillermo Rauch · Guillermo Rauch: Why Great Companies are Defined by How Many Things They Say No To | E1069 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings · Oct 6, 2023 · at 20:33
Guillermo Rauch, founder and CEO of Vercel, explains his methodology for vetting technical candidates to avoid being misled by candidates who speak well but lack execution depth.
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“Like, I think being able to dive into like the absolute depth of the problem is, is something that everyone should be able to do. That doesn't mean that you have the complete texture But you have the ability to, I think really what you need is the conceptual understanding. You might not know exactly how, like writing a custom module for the Linux kernel works, but you should be able to understand how the parts fit together if you're evaluating a systems engineer that's joining your company. That texture is what allows you to discern better whether someone is just telling a good story or there's actually Depth to the story.”
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