The Assessment

The incoming Product Manager is a very important role for us and this was the expectation.

Joel Spolsky, co-founder of Stack Overflow, highlighted challenges in technical hiring:

“Two of the biggest challenges in technical hiring are identifying people who are smart but don’t get things done and people who get things done but aren’t smart.”

Steve Jobs: “It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.

GitLab: Implements a paid trial for some positions to test candidates’ suitability while respecting their time and effort.

I need people in this role who are able to research the market, understand the evoluation of a problem and value responses to that based on state of tech and eventually where the edge is currently so that it can be formulated into a coherent product strategy that is granular and each dot of micro hypothesis connects to other such that a logical chain finally leads to an exactly mapped product feature tree and eventual roadmap- which itself needs to be tracked for arrival of any data to the contrary. Constant thesis producing and data seeking machine to validate/invalidate the thesis.

This is where intensity comes in. A person has to want to do this and peeling layers and layers of how and why should be part of his DNA. This and most other things at a startup are not a job. You gotta be invested to your core into what is being done — because the startups meaning is your meaning too.

A key hurdle where i stumble over people is when they move slow, don’t get things across the boundry on their own, wait on other people, ask intelligent but meaningless questions and maybe 100 other things that piss me off, but it all sums upto — can’t deal with thinkers, we’re building and we need doers.

Like this high energy manifesto. https://x.com/GRITCULT/status/1878874536319578383

The High Energy Manifesto

Sitting, scrolling, thinking, waiting? You need momentum, you need to be high energy. You need to be juggling projects, need to be walking fast everywhere, constantly tapped in, constantly locked in. You gotta live fast-paced. Following every interest, every song, every strange encounter. Speed is for those who love life, and everything it has to offer. High energy is the way to get more, more of everything.

Being high IQ is not enough, you must also be high energy. One high-energy genius accomplishes more in a day than a thousand dead-eyed intellectuals do in their entire lives.

Most “smart” people are SPIRITUAL COWARDS. They hide behind analysis paralysis, using their intelligence to justify their fear. Mental masturbators, addicted to thinking. Their high IQ is used for rationalizing their own excuses. They die with their genius unused, their energy untapped, their potential WASTED.

Your energy must MATCH your intelligence. If you can think at light speed, you must MOVE at light speed. You must pair lightning of thought with thunder of action.

Every moment spent in low energy is programming you to remain slow. Your brain evolved for MOVEMENT. Your ancestors spent their entire lives in movement, searching, hunting, surviving.

The world doesn’t need more midwits. It needs HIGH-ENERGY HIGH IQ GENIUSES willing to bet everything on their vision. Stop being a high IQ NPC. Stop being a brilliant coward.

Your intelligence is a weapon — your energy is the ammo.

The world needs those who have brilliance & boldness. The future belongs to the energetic.
— GRITCULT

Paid assessment was respectful but our candidate fell short

• Got the briefs wrong. From more abstract briefs, to more and more specific briefs going wrong. Misunderstanding what was expected from you.
• Spent time in learning. We’re here to do. AI offers knowledge, you just have to know how to ask right questions.
• No valueable outcomes
• No independent and important thoughts
• Not knowing how to organise self and work, with the lack of work experience coming out. That’s ok. I meet people with 5 years experience in Infosys and they’ve probably not done 3 months worth of work. But they just can’t survive our pace of expectation.
• Unable to get things out of the door

In the end it came to — how long this person can train under me and start pulling their weight. Answer was unclear. Not just 3–6 months but just unclear. And with the outcomes as a product manager I’m able to get from ai — I’m not willing to compromise with a trainee.

I’m looking for a monster, just like me, to rake JIRA tickets into a burning fire of production servers like a mad furious man with evil glint in the eye.