Qureshi: FAANG engineers often struggle with startup outcome-oriented effort
Nabeel S. Qureshi · How Palantir built the ultimate founder factory | Nabeel S. Qureshi (founder, writer, ex-Palantir) · May 11, 2025 · at 1:00:12
Former Palantir engineer and startup founder Nabeel S. Qureshi discusses startup hiring criteria and why big-tech alumni often struggle in early-stage environments.
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“Like, I think when you hire out of, especially, not to pick on them, but I think if you hire out a fan, right, it's like people, People want like a 400 K a year job. They would like to work a certain number of hours. They would like to ship some code and then go home. Like that's basically the model that you get accustomed to, even if you don't intend to when you work at a big company. And so if you hire out of that for a really small startup, it can be really challenging because a lot of your success as a startup depends on each individual person being like, no, I'm really gonna, I'm gonna work this evening if that's what it takes to get this thing working.”
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