Insight certainty 4/5 debate potential 3/5

Unsolicited back-channel references are far more insightful than candidate-provided ones

Michael Lopp · The human side of world-class engineering leadership | Michael Lopp (Apple, Palantir, Slack) · Jan 25, 2024 · at 48:14

Michael Lopp, veteran engineering executive (Apple, Slack, Palantir), discusses hiring practices and reference checking with First Round Capital partner Brett Berson.

0:00 / 0:12exact quote · 12.5s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“I think you can learn from background. Checks, but there are people that are, they're picking the people that they're telling to you. You gotta do like unsolicited ones are actually the ones that are actually interesting because someone who hates them tells you really interesting things, both positive and negative.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

More from Michael Lopp

Opinion
Building successful software is getting harder despite AI and modern tools
“No, I think it's getting harder, actually. Well, number one is because there's so many, when, back in the Barlow days, this is pre-web, this is software that you print on a disk and ship to humans, so you've got, you know, you're shipping it once a year, so th…”
Michael Lopp Jan 25, 2024 ▶ 7:52 The human side of world-class engineering leadership | Michael Lopp (Apple, Palantir, Slack)
Insight
Managers should encourage employees to leave Slack once they outgrow it
“And here's a controversial one. There's times we spent a year. I'm like, you don't need to be here anymore. You have learned everything that you're going to learn here at Slack. It's time to go somewhere else. And I wouldn't say it like that, but there's truly…”
Michael Lopp Jan 25, 2024 ▶ 41:46 The human side of world-class engineering leadership | Michael Lopp (Apple, Palantir, Slack)
Opinion
Lopp: Borland vastly influenced Microsoft's programming language strategy
“It was all of the languages led the charge on the languages. I would argue vastly influenced Microsoft programming language strategy.”
Michael Lopp Jan 25, 2024 ▶ 3:25 The human side of world-class engineering leadership | Michael Lopp (Apple, Palantir, Slack)
Insight
Contracting out engineering or design for a startup is a disaster
“I think there's literally founders who think cool, but it's going to kind of Contract out the engineering or kind of bring in some con, you know, an upside firm to do this. This is a hugely horrible, bad idea. If you're trying to build software as to not, and …”
Michael Lopp Jan 25, 2024 ▶ 5:57 The human side of world-class engineering leadership | Michael Lopp (Apple, Palantir, Slack)
Insight
Lopp: Building software without product managers is a disaster
“I got an engineer. He's amazing. And I got a designer and he's amazing. We don't really need product people. Like who are these folks? We know what we should do here. That's also a disaster. So like, I'm just picking one of the many sort of. Initial conditions…”
Michael Lopp Jan 25, 2024 ▶ 6:35 The human side of world-class engineering leadership | Michael Lopp (Apple, Palantir, Slack)
Insight
Scaling requires unglamorous process operators alongside visionaries like Stewart Butterfield
“You need those Stuart Butterfields. You need those Dr. Carps and those sorts of folks, but you also need like that set of folks that are just like turning the crank, building the crank and turning the crank. These are incredibly important. By the way, not sexy…”
Michael Lopp Jan 25, 2024 ▶ 11:02 The human side of world-class engineering leadership | Michael Lopp (Apple, Palantir, Slack)
Made with StarZero

Turn any episode into a week of clips.

This entire site, about 80 episodes transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable, runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.