🔗Culture Isn't a Mission Statement — It's Who You Hire
Every company claims to value ownership, speed, craftsmanship. But in reality, culture isn’t defined by all-hands slides or posters.
It’s defined by who you choose to hire, promote, and tolerate. And as engineering leaders, hiring is one of the most high-leverage tools we have for shaping the future.
If you hire for what’s “good enough,” you’ll reinforce the present. If you hire for where you want to go, you create momentum.
🔗A-Players Don’t Just Build — They Expect Alignment
High-performing engineers bring more than skill. They bring urgency, standards, and a mindset of continuous betterment.
Drop one into a team where the baseline is:
- “Let’s not rock the boat.”
- “That’s not my job.”
- “We’ll get to it eventually.”
…and something subtle but dangerous happens.
They don’t quit immediately. But they start feeling friction:
- Their bar for quality is met with eye-rolls.
- Initiative is seen as disruption.
- Speed is misread as aggression.
- Feedback loops are broken or slow.
They didn’t come to slow down. They came to build. And to build with others who care as much as they do.
🔗Gravity Works the Wrong Way
There’s a myth that dropping an A-player into a team raises the bar.
But in practice? Organizational gravity pulls harder downward than excellence pulls upward.
- The A-player starts self-censoring.
- They tune out instead of tuning in.
- Excellence becomes isolated. Then exhausted.
Culture doesn’t scale through osmosis — it scales through intentional design.
🔗Hiring Isn’t a Transaction — It’s a Design Decision
If you’re an engineering hiring manager, you’re not just filling seats. You’re shaping your org’s operating system.
Hiring someone who’s technically capable but culturally misaligned is worse than an unfilled req. Because they don’t just slow velocity — they shift norms.
People mimic what gets rewarded. If “coasting” makes it through the interview loop, you’re silently telling your team: This is fine.
🔗Hire for Tomorrow’s Culture, Not Today’s Constraints
It’s tempting to hire for what fits into the current team. But fit can become a trap if it means protecting comfort instead of expanding capability.
Instead, hire for who you want to become:
- Engineers who raise the ceiling, not just fill the gap.
- Teammates who challenge assumptions respectfully.
- Builders who see systems, not just tickets.
Great teams aren’t maintained — they’re constructed. And construction starts with courageous hiring.
🔗You Don't Hire Great People to Manage Them Into Mediocrity
Steve Jobs once said:
It doesn't make sense to hire smart people and then tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.
That’s not just a philosophy — it’s a challenge.
When you bring in smart, driven, product-minded engineers, they don't want to just execute your backlog. They want to improve the system. They want to question the assumptions. They want to create better defaults.
And if your org’s response is to suppress, micromanage, or second-guess — you don’t just waste talent. You signal that vision isn’t welcome here.
Great hires aren’t looking for permission. They’re looking for trust and space to lead.
If you ignore that, you're not just underutilizing them — you're burning the bridge for the next one too.
🔗You Can't Out-Coach a Misaligned Hire
Coaching works when there's intentionality, curiosity, and a willingness to grow.
But if someone shows up just to tick boxes or collect a paycheck, no amount of mentorship will drive cultural contribution. Misaligned hires don’t just underperform — they become cultural drag.
And the A-players feel it first.
When you hire someone excellent, you don’t just gain skill. You gain force — direction, speed, and acceleration.
But when you compromise the bar “just this once,” you don’t just slow down — you start normalizing inertia.
Hire for the culture and vision you want. Because that’s what you’ll build — whether you mean to or not.