Hiring
46 tweets
Just published the latest @a16z Build newsletter - our weekly roundup of exciting startup opportunities and founders to build with. Featuring open roles at @Waymo, @zipline, @vercel, @cursor_ai, and @Revolut - and with founders like @bspellacy, @8ennett, @joeygrassia, @BaijuBhatt, @ml_angelopoulos, @hollympeck, @thaiscbranco_, @sarahookr, @kylemathews, @davidmytton, and others. Time to build https://a16zbuild.substack.com/p/waymo-zipline-and-the-co-founder…
turns out, senior engineers accept more agent output than juniors. this is because: - they write higher-signal prompts with tighter spec and minimal ambiguity - they decompose work into agent-compatible units - they have stronger priors for correctness, making review faster and more accurate - juniors generate plenty but lack the verification heuristics to confidently greenlight output shows that coding agents amplify existing engineering skill, not replace it
New job! I’m hiring folks interested in building and researching the next generation of evals and eval infa. DMs are open :)
Claude Code is meaningfully changing the roles we hire for @browsercompany, and what’s newly possible with the people we already have. We have designers putting up PRs left and right, non-engineers prototyping their own ideas, and engineers getting the leverage to try more experimental work (that often ends up working!) without negatively impacting the main things they’re on the hook for. In short, thanks to Claude Code, we’re running more experiments and learning faster. It feels like our entire team just got personal e-bikes to explore and paint with code. I know this sounds a little hype-y, but I’m sharing for other founders: Yes, AI thinkbois are annoying on X and it’s mostly noise, but this one is real. If you don’t work Claude Code-native ASAP your team’s going to get left behind (like fully embracing a mobile-native product in the early 2010s). We’re still grappling with what this will change about how we work and hire, but a few things are clear at @browsercompany going forward: - Compensation & talent bar. We will pay a premium for exceptional talent, especially people who are native to the Claude Code way of building. - Perks & processes. We will treat our teammates like a record label treats its artists: our job is to get them into flow, keep them in flow, and help more of their ideas ship. - Creative ambition & freedom. We will do fewer things as a company, but with a breadth and depth within those things — and tolerance for risky bets — that wasn’t previously possible. This also means hiring for new types of roles — to define, design, and oversee this new way of working. That’s why we’re opening a new “Design Producer” role. Someone to lead coordination for all of our product work on @diabrowser. The JD is now live on our jobs page, but the TL;DR is: you’ll coordinate the work of our world-class design team (and other creative collaborators). Especially how our product leaders and their work intersects with (a) other functions internally and (b) collaborators externally. It’s a “come run the record label” and “design the recording studio” role. Help us figure out how an AI-native design team runs, especially one that feels like you’re working with classmates on a creative studio project in college than tech company. The best part of this opportunity are the people you’d be working with. It’s a star-studded crew to learn from, empower, and collaborate with every day. Our designers built the original Medium product, headed up software design for Tesla, led Apple’s Safari browser, and were responsible for some of your favorite features in WhatsApp. Finally, this new “Producer” role is roughly modeled on Apple’s producer discipline. We’re eager to meet design leaders who want to try something more creative, newly-challenging, and IC-Y; or very senior designer ICs who want to coach and collaborate without intense people management. If this sounds interesting, please apply via the JD on our site, or reach out to @dustin or me (my DMs are open here).. You’ll work most closely with the two of us and @tfeener. Our ambition is for Dia to be a person’s primary workspace on their desktop computer. More importantly, we want to design our dream place to work for the next decade. Come help us shape it?
We just raised $3M to build the world's first AI Chief of Staff, and we want to build with exceptional people. http://bondapp.io
today we’re launching Anything Experts a curated network of pros who can help you polish your app, or build the entire thing for you can’t wait to see this evolve
You’re a solo founder. You can only hire one: – Killer marketer – Rockstar engineer Who gets the job?
I'm hiring a "talent scout" but not the "sit on LinkedIn/X all day scanning credentials" type. job to be done = produce a constant feed of interesting humans who should be on our radar. every day may bring a new focus "persona".. one day, you're scouting for invitees to Build (http://build.a16z.com) dinners and retreats hosted with/by our vertical funds (e.g. American Dynamism, Health & Bio, Infra, Apps, Consumer, Crypto, etc) the next day, it might be scouting for a New Media Fellowship cohort, high trajectory operators/experts we can drop into a WhatsApp together, people in a specific geography ahead of an IRL event, talent profiles to invite to "talent demo days" with our portfolio companies or feature in the a16z Build newsletter (https://a16zbuild.substack.com) the traditional approach to talent scouting optimizes for volume + data—where they've worked, what school, which logos. that's necessary but insufficient on its own. the real test is whether you can spot someone before they're obvious. pattern-matching on trajectory, not credentials. so, who are you? a collector of interesting humans. you thrive on being first to find breakout talent—the way some people thrive on discovering a band before they blow up. you're less "resume reviewer" .. more "human potential radar." you think in systems but don't over-index to "legibility bias." you see people for potential strengths, not lack of weakness. the work is part research rabbit-hole, part relationship cultivation, part editorial curation. you're not investing, but you're helping us build the ecosystem that will pay it forward to the next generation of great founders and operators, many of whom may go on to raise and build incredible companies. you? know them? tag or DM
a16z Build
Because of LLMs, the only type of people I’d hire now are what I’d call “super-unicorns” - Developer - Designer (or great design taste) - Product-focused (vs feature-focused) - Marketer - Agent expert - High emotional intelligence - 5+ years experience creating web app products - Extreme ownership (h/t @jockowillink) There are very few folks with all these traits … but I just wouldn’t want to work with someone who didn’t have all these skills/behaviors. This will keep team sizes very small. 2026 is going to be very interesting for the whole industry.
Social media 2026-2030 Bullish YouTube Bullish X Bullish Subbstakk Even IG Bearish TikTok Bearish Threads Bearish LinkedIn (our best hires and cofounder are from x)
This is very interesting. Stripe is now hiring Marketing Managers. But what's the fun fact? They are hiring AEO and GEO staff...
US hiring is slowing at an alarming rate: US-based employers have announced plans to add 497,151 jobs year-to-date, the weakest total since 2010 when 392,033 hires were planned in the first 11 months of the year. This also marks a -35% decline from the 761,954 announced during the same period in 2024. Hiring is now on track for its 5th consecutive annual decline. In November, companies announced just 9,074 hiring plans, the 2nd-lowest for this month since at least 2016. Meanwhile, seasonal hiring intentions fell to 372,520, the lowest on record since data collection began in 2012, with no new announcements in November. US hiring demand is at crisis levels.
Ben Horowitz on the 1 reason founders fail as CEO The a16z co-founder is asked for the #1 reason founders fail in the CEO role, to which he replies: “I would say the big thing is a lack of decision — hesitation . . . You can be really smart, but if you wait too long before you pull the trigger, you’re not smart anymore. There’s all kinds of excuses people tell themselves to not make a decision.” Ben gives firing an executive as an example of a situation where founders often wait too long to make a decision. Founders will often get stuck on issues like, “If we made such a big deal when we hired him, what is the press going to say?” or “What are the people in the company going to say?” or “I don’t have time to hire a new person to do the job.” He reflects: “There’s all these reasons not to make the decision. And if you think about them for more than five minutes, you go: Well that doesn’t make any sense because this guy is a f’ing up the whole org. Who cares what the press says? Just get rid of him and start rebuilding now.” Ben continues: “It’s the lack of confidence that generally causes a no-decision where there really needs to be a decision is what I would say is the common pattern.” How do founders become more confident? In Ben’s view, that’s personal: “At the end of the day, confidence is personal and you have to feel it yourself to have it . . . And the thing that causes the crisis in confidence is: you invent something, you hire a bunch of people, you make a decision, it’s wrong, and people really suffer from it. You feel horrible because you’re like, ‘Wow I don’t know what I’m doing, and I made a mistake and it had real consequences.’ Most people in life don’t have a situation like that until they become CEO. And so then it’s like, ‘Well how do I recover from that?’” In short, confidence has to be earned: You try. You fail. You get back up. You learn from your mistakes. Do that enough times and you’ll become confident in your ability to handle anything. Video source: @myfirstmilpod (2025)
I have never relied on traditional interview processes to get a job. No DSA rounds, no system design grilling, no multi-step loops. Almost every role I have landed came through a single conversation focused entirely on the projects I had built. The reason is simple: proof of work makes interviews optional. I didn’t come from a big name college. There was no built-in reputation attached to where I studied, and no advantage from well known tags like IIT, GSOC, or Big Tech internships. Those signals help - they make it easier for someone to assume you are capable. Since I didn’t have those signals, I had to create my own. My approach was to build things consistently and put them out into the world. Over time, that body of work became my credibility. Every job I have gotten has followed the same pattern: Merkle Science One conversation. No coding tests. We talked about the projects I had built in college and how I approached solving problems. My second job (AI infra company). Again, just a couple of calls. The discussion centered around my previous work and the systems I had built. My current projects, my work on Water, is what opened the door. The project itself did the heavy lifting. In every case, employers evaluated me based on what I had already built, not how well I remembered algorithms. The only consistent strategy I have followed is building things that interested me. Not all of them were complex, but they were all real. FitMe — fitness assistant using pose detection (later published in IEEE) VirtueX — virtual try-on system using a laptop camera TigerDB — a simple key-value database created to understand database internals CricLang — a toy programming language built while exploring compilers Water - a multi-agent orchestration framework built purely out of curiosity These are just a few of the projects I have built. I have built many more projects that are not listed here. None of these were built for interviews. They were built because I wanted to understand how things worked. That curiosity produced a track record that employers could evaluate directly. One thing people often miss: building is only half of it. If your work isn’t visible, it can’t help you. You don’t need to be loud, but you need to be present: • Share what you’re building • Explain how it works • Show your progress • Post your learnings You don’t need viral posts. You just need to put your work where it can be seen by the right people. This is how I ended up with opportunities — not by optimizing for interviews, but by consistently publishing my work. Proof of work gives people: • A clear signal of your skills • Evidence of your ability to execute • Insight into how you think • Confidence that you can deliver These are stronger signals than a single interview round or a competitive exam score. ## Conclusion You don’t need elite credentials to stand out. You need a track record. If you consistently build and share your work: People will know what you’re capable of Opportunities will come through conversations, not assessments You won’t need to “perform” in traditional interview formats Everything meaningful in my career so far has come from this simple principle: Build real things. Share them. Let the work speak. You can read more such pieces from me on https://manthanguptaa.in/
Today we hit $100M ARR at @clay. It took us six years to go from $0-1m, then two years to go from $1-100m. I’m going to walk you through the 6 biggest GTM bets that got us here. $100M ARR may be the headline, but I’m most proud of how we accomplished it: we’ve never churned an enterprise customer, have >200% enterprise NRR, every dollar we invest grows 15x (a ratio that has tripled in recent years), and we’ve created a culture of creativity and belonging (with a perfect Glassdoor score to match). Note: -We are a product-driven company. Without that foundation and a unique POV on the market, none of this would work. -Our GTM approach is authentic to us. This isn't a plug-and-play framework. Greatness comes from doing what only you can do. Here are the big bets that worked for us: 1. Building a self-serve motion through reverse demos We originally had a product that nobody could use. It took us 8 calls to sell a $200/mo product! Reverse demos were key to bringing that to zero. Customers would share their screen, and we’d use Zoom annotations to solve their problem in 30mins. They accomplished something real, learned how to use Clay, and we got so much UI feedback that we immediately applied to the product. 2. An irrational investment in brand Most B2B startups treat brand as a post-PMF investment. We flipped that. We bought Clay(.)com and hired a claymation artist before we had revenue. Our Head of Brand was employee #18. These choices felt irrational but they’re authentic to us and reflect our identity. Now it’s a moat. 3. Switching to usage-based pricing We were the first GTM company to offer usage-based pricing. Our customers were shocked we didn't charge per seat and our investors thought we were leaving money on the table. But we're a product built for efficiency. Usage-based pricing helped us target more technical users and enabled our land-and-expand motion. 4. Building an agency motion to generate UGC on LinkedIn Cold email agencies were our first customers. They posted about Clay organically to position themselves as experts and attract clients. We pounced on this and enabled them. This sparked a self-perpetuating cycle: new people discover Clay through that content, join, create their own, and earn recognition too. 5. Unconventional hiring 50% of our GTM and G&A teams are doing their job for the first time. This is how we bring creativity into our company and think differently. We’ve hired farmers, physicists, archaeologists, magicians in new roles. We look for product passion, customer empathy and technical curiosity, then teach the mechanics. 6. We created a new career path & economy: GTM Engineering There are now thousands of open GTME jobs and hundreds of agencies built around it. Many first-time entrepreneurs have already built 7-figure businesses on top of Clay. Our community, with clubs in more than 70 cities, is our force multiplier, and tells us more about impact than any metric ever could. - All of these bets show we’re not racing anyone. We spent six years figuring out what and how we wanted to build. In an era of overnight successes and growth at all costs, it turns out that taking time to build something authentic can create a business with bigger impact & more growth than you'd think. Our creativity remains our greatest alpha. That will continue to show up in how we do our work, who we hire, and in our boldest bets coming up next year.
2025 has been an awesome year for Lovable. Here's what's top of mind for me right now: AGI will be a software system, not just a large language model. Over the coming year, there are only a few places in the world that can build this system. I started Lovable because I knew we had a chance to be one of them, and to ensure that when AGI exists, it's a world where human creativity remains important. For us to succeed, the thing I care most about is the team. How we work together. Inspire each other. Who we bring on. The problem we're solving has no playbook. Every week we're making decisions that have never been made, shipping things that have never existed. That requires people who can operate in uncertainty and move fast anyway. This is why we systematically hire people who can build something from nothing. Very often previous founders, who have run their own company and know what it feels like to make hard calls with incomplete information. To feel the weight of it and keep going. That instinct is hard to teach. I'm especially interested in people who are currently having the time of their life running their own company. That experience is exactly what's valuable as we build AGI here in Stockholm, with some some of the most exceptional and fun people to be around in the world. If you want to help, I'd love if you send me an email at founders@lovable.dev with who I should talk to. You're welcome to name yourself in the email. Ideally include 1-3 bullets on what they've been passionate about and what almost impossible things they've done. I'm excited to get to know you. Maybe partner or even work together.
We should stop categorizing people as “technical” and “non-technical”
Absolutely insane stat. Opus 4.5 outperformed EVERY SINGLE HUMAN CANDIDATE EVER in Anthropic's notoriously difficult take-home exam for prospective performance engineering candidates.
