McGrew: Palantir avoided hiring traditional PMs who lacked abstraction skills
Bob McGrew · The FDE Playbook for AI Startups with Bob McGrew · Y Combinator · Sep 8, 2025 · at 19:51
Bob McGrew, former executive at Palantir and OpenAI, discusses the difficulty of hiring product managers capable of designing generalized platforms rather than single-flow consumer applications.
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“We didn't hire product managers for a long time. And when it did come time for me to hire product managers, I would interview people who were amazing product managers at, you know, other companies. And I would ask them to think at this level of abstraction. They were very, they couldn't really think at this level of abstraction.”
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