The Art of Hiring and Getting Hired, with Jordan Mazer, Head of Talent at a16z Games

hey folks and welcome to the deconstructor of fun podcast I'm your host Mishka katkov and today my guest my guest is Jordan merer who's head of talent at a16z games now I think this podcast episode is very relevant and very insightful as you very well know we're we're living through some challenging times a lot of layoffs at a lot of big companies and small ones as well and so I think Jordan is a perfect guest to discuss the top of career management and and town management and hiring because he has experience from Amazon scopely and Riot building some of the best teams in the industry so in this episode we're going to have a lot of discussion looking things from company perspective such as how do you hire against culture and what should optimal interview process be but we also discuss things from individual's perspective on things like how do you evaluate an opportunity and how do you negotiate an offer so I want to thank thank our

sponsors exolo apps sler dat and heroic laabs and without further Ado ladies and gentlemen uh please enjoy the podcast welcome welcome welcome everybody to the deconstructor of fun podcast I'm your host M KATU and today as always a fantastic guest Jordan merer head of talent at a16z it's one of the uh one of the few topnotch Venture Capital firms in the world and um honored to have you here Jordan missa thank you I've read so much from you since I think since 2013 or something like that I've been a listener and I'm honored to have been invited to get a moment to speak with you well Jordan you've shaved for this podcast so I'm honored and then I just learned like two minutes ago that this is your first podcast I'm I'm doubly and triply honored to to be your your uh first first host one of very many I'm I'm very

sure about that and kind of like leading leading to that like you you've you know you have a super super impressive background uh 10 years of experience in Talent acquisition in Human Resources working in companies like Amazon scopely Riot and now a16 zal I mean the who's who of the most impressive Talent filled organizations in the world and you've been kind of in the shadows before just like you know doing your thing building your craft building your experience and now you've been more active in LinkedIn and and that's how we kind of connected because you had so so many good points and well thought out opinions and I had to ping you like hey man like we have to we have to have a a public conversation so how does it feel to kind of go from the uh from the Shadows to kind of like being in front of everybody it's wild you know part of the experience obviously internally especially when I got to the point at Riot um I needed to have a voice within

the company and to the teams that I managed where which at times were fairly large but having a public voice is something at least in HR that often is something that you're advised against right because there are a lot of potential risks that come with stating your opinion and galvanizing any any sort of response that you might generate and often the reality between what is interesting to others and what feels safe in HR they're often antithetical to one another and so it's been an interesting experience but one that I think is really valuable and helps you know that a16z really wants us to be out there to have opinions to share them to help shape sort of the public discourse around topics that are relevant and so um it's new but hopefully something that I can navigate without the the sorts of risks that right uh um we might or some might encounter I mean you're you're doing great stuff uh honestly like every time you post whether they're more on a personal side or whether you you kind of reply to somebody else's threat they are

very thought out um opinions clearly you have such a wealth of of of experience in in your craft so it's I think it's it's really great that a6c pushes its employees to uh to have their voice and especially I'm sure that people who are who know you who have been working with you at Amazon at scop at Riot they're like what's going on with Jordan why is he posting all this type of stuff but there's a there's a clear reason because there's a clear benefit you didn't just wake up one night one morning and be like you know what I think I need to have voice on LinkedIn like what's the reason for you I think yeah so I will talk about this probably in a bit but a16z has has a platform I have the ability to put on the Cape of right the a16 Z cape and to potentially get attention that I might not have otherwise had and as long as I'm saying things that are thoughtful and resonant I am able to potentially magnetize

the interest of lots of people I represent a very broad portfolio of companies and part of one of my goals is to help bring talent to their doorstep as best I can if I can help shape the view of gaming if I can help lead the conversation of where we're going as an industry the change from maybe publisher back to VC backed sorts of companies and what they provide as opportunity for either folks that have been gaming for a long time but haven't seen an alternative route or from outside of gaming who have the appropriate and fungible skills to join the workforce in gaming which does not have a large enough sort of talent infrastructure to actually support the growing and and booming business that we're part of then I've hopefully done part of my job which is helping right that that sort of inbound Talent funnel and more importantly if I can get them to write directly to me and say I would love to do that I can help network within the portfolio so I think the reality of

social media is it gives you an ability to gain an incredible degree of Leverage on how you like create outcomes for others and so as uncomfortable as it feels as risky as it is at least for me as a human who lives this I guess not hermit likee but far less outward life um it's impossible to deny the effect or the value it provides both for a16z and the portfolio companies that were intended to support and so yeah it's it's definitely a strategic Advantage for us to lean into that and to use the platform that's been established by so many who preceded me here at a16z and all the incredible work that they've done I love that mindset you work at a gigantic it's a corporation by this point I mean it's a it's a gigantic organization you know in in that sense like it's a multinational big but still there's that hustle mindset that hey you know everybody needs to fish over here like even head of talent like be active over there don't just rely on on on the

brand value and on all that on on the external recruiters or Partners like you need to be out there as well during the uh the work boiling the ocean and making things happen so I I I like that I like that approach so I want to just congratulate a16z on on pushing uh pushing your talent to do this I think it's it's a great hustle mindset even if you're big even if you have all resources I would say like big big is a an interesting way to frame A6 you know what 500 or so employees so at least in relation to like most huge companies I would I would characterize it as small in terms of its effect on the world may be large you know outsized but I I would at least characterize the company as one that still feels to me fairly small having come from an organization previously of nearly 5,000 people and before that you know hundreds of thousands of people yeah of course I'm I'm thinking more about you know I would send it as a corporation understand 500 is a lot of people you know it's small

to midsize well midsize but there's a lot of ownership in that company a16z owns pieces of the most successful companies in the world so I kind of think about that in that sense a corporation is like the web is never ending and in every place so it is it's one of the most influential organizations out there like you can't even deny that if your founder is constantly on Joe Rogan you're a you're a legit company like I will not I I will not share my opinion about our our relative impact oh I understand let's let's get it let's get into the the let's talk about more about you so uh how did you end up in in recruitment like what led you to to this path uh out of all the possible paths yeah total failure I mean like most right I fell into recruiting without any specific intent like if if I look back on my academic career I studied what I wanted political science and philosophy I worked at a municipal lobbying firm doing research while I was

in college I went to a sailing and scuba diving camp in the British Virgin Islands and I helped sort of like chauffeur teens around and teach them how to explore the underwater habitat I fixed computers and deleted malware and learned command line like is just whatever I thought was interesting and that lack of forethought which is funny because now my career has to help people think about their career decisions it landed me in a in a space where it wasn't very evident this is about 2010 so right after right the total collapse of the economy and there weren't many jobs out there so I applied to 700 800 jobs and I found a job it was just a bad time I found a job in recruiting at an agency and I quickly got to Amazon by way of just a random interaction I had tried to recruit a a an engineer an engineering manager at Amazon and he laughed at me as I'm never going to leave but I I love how you did that and he said why don't you come in for an interview with us I like you know sure I I'll do that and I was so lucky to be there early I got to see like a

well-designed very thoughtful scaled hiring machine where they took hiring seriously I can't tell you how many times in my you know the following years the ensuing time where people would tell me you can't have a really thoughtful hiring machine at scale but I had seen one very clearly and I knew that they were wrong it's just that it's it's something you have to think about very very deeply and execute on and prioritize to accomplish it so I was super lucky to be there but I was also one of 5,000 recruiters when I was there and the path of my growth would have been who knows how long and so I wanted to do something very different and so I joined scop Le when they were seed stage they were I don't know 15 or 17 employees and there's this famous picture of Anker um the CTO at scop Le in like a broom closet I wasn't in that office I was in one right after it which was like this live work Loft and you know people were getting parking tickets on the streets we up parking and you like they were just figuring out who to be and I got the chance to learn like what

does it mean to hire in a company that has no credibility no one knows who they are it's a market that's brand new this is mobile gaming right when it was coming out of j2me and you know we were going from snake to interactive 3D experiences they just made a mini golf matchup if if you're familiar or remember that game yeah I do and it was really the Advent of an entirely new sort of Industry to a degree one that I that you were participating in at that point and so I got to help scale them up to 135 which is a really crazy experience of like man how do you get people to respond how do you get them to make huge life decisions we were hiring you know um Consultants from you know the the biggest consulting firms we were hiring investment bankers into product management positions this is sort of Allah love is model as well and getting them to walk away from the kinds of jobs that they were in was a interesting challenge for sure I spent a couple years there and I I

wanted to do something different I I started to realize I could match my personal interest for the types of games that are being created with my professional interest in building these sorts of companies and riot at the time was like 400 employees leag had sort of taken off and I got invited in to help them build a valerant team it was called Aries at the time that was with uh Steven Lim slim as many might know he was the EP and and man like I was just so excited to go to an organization that was very clearly going up and to the right but building something brand new and they were passionate about the kinds of games that I love to play and that I believed in had powerful business models that could really push the envelope so that was amazing I stayed there for about eight and a half years I eventually became responsible as I stated earlier for you know the entire recruiting organization that was sort of on the heels of Kotaku theh investigation and so I got to learn

how do you make thousands of hires in the middle of a brand cataclysm and and everything that goes along with it um yeah and then I ended up here so that's that's how I got into it I know it was a bit of a longer story but um I happen stance and I learned I love the work I love helping people find opportunity and I love building organizations yeah and you've had experience for different types of organization like you said scopely scopely was I learned a lot about hiring from going through scope Le process back back back in the days I mean back back then they were already uh in um what's that area in La damn um the Hayden tract in Culver Culver City Culver City yes the Culver City house um yeah they the the thing that sculle did really well at least back in the day was they made you feel that these are all friends and you're going to join this amazing community of friends and everybody's passionate about things and and so for like it was it was like one

of the best recruitment process I've ever had uh in my like you know scopely invited everybody over and so forth but uh but I learned a lot I still use the scopy tactics and everything it's just like inviting a person in and making them feel so welcomed like you're gonna come in here you're gonna have new friends and that is a value proposition that nobody can can beat like money is one thing but friends is much more valuable than money and so so I I I know what you're talking about like we can go details sometimes about that but we're not here to talk about you know how to grow organization from 15 to 150 by by getting top talent uh but that's also a pretty pretty interesting thing it was a fun place to be very interesting time without a doubt so uh so tell me about what is a head of talent at a venture capital firm do you have like peers you talk to uh like like or are you the only head of talent at a venture like like how do you how do you define Your Role like what is this

okay so F first I've only been here for eight months I often ask myself this exact question so I'm I'm know much more an expert than most others might be and there are certainly analoges heads of talent at other firms and funds now I don't know that they all have the same job so while I did say a16z is not a gargantuan organization in terms of head count it is larger than most other Capital firms in terms of head count and so our ability to create differentiated roles than other funds is pretty high right because higher the number of portfolio companies is is higher and so that creates some degree of differentiation um but I should say that a16 Z's approach is to be founder focused to provide them all our Founders all of our portfolio companies the strongest operating capability possible to enable them to achieve their goals and one of the theses or underpinning foundational principles of that is if

you need individualized skills then we will bring them so there are at least three funds where this is very clearly the case for us so the first is bio second is crypto the third for us is games these are areas where getting support from some person who has the functional expertise but not the market expertise might not be the highest impact method of getting advice or network or what have so you know as an example in my world if they brought in someone from General SAS to advise on hiring the likelihood they understand game design or technical art or all the individual concepts of technical art like rigging versus meshes versus right whatever the peline components yeah it's like it's all super different and so this idea of individualized operator support is a critical component of how we want to approach supporting our portfolio companies so if you look at the game fund for example Justin pay you know twitch BD he led

twitch BD he knows Publishers he knows the cloud providers he knows the deal terms he knows how that all works if you look at Lester Chen he led YouTube creators at you know sorry led the YouTube Creator program and so he knows ninja and toast and Pokemon and shroud and so if they say they want to be introduced then he can be like well I know their agent and I know the deal terms typically and I know you know it's very unique um sort of of perspective or Doug who right LED marketing for supercell and had a huge role in shaping what I think is one of the most emblematic brands in G Mobile gaming it's absolutely incredible to be able to work with people of that caliber and for me it's I come in and I come from the game side to help with with whatever I can so I'll be I'll be sort of thoughtful like at the top level what is it that I actually want to help them achieve it's sort of three things I think there's three goals for what it is that I Supply Founders should feel that

operator contribution was instrumental and then meeting their business objectives and in my case that's stuff related to their hiring needs right the second is Partners investors GPS they see improved deal flow earlier more or incremental deal flow as a result of my team and me being here so maybe I know people in the industry who are raising Capital who might not otherwise ask for it or maybe I know people are looking for jobs and I say to them have you ever thought about making a new game why are you going to another Studio why are you seeking publisher support and maybe I can help sort of reorient them in another Direction um I also should be able to help close deals so when people come to us and say that they want to be funded and we're being considered among right many other potential funds it is my and my operating peers job to convince them to say it's not just the dollars that you're going to get it's all of our relationships it's all of our knowledge it's all of our expert expertise and in my case that's well I

know a lot of people who've worked in gaming and either I can help or introduce you or I can introduce you to people who might be advisers ormes or any any number subject matter expertise um that will help you achieve your goals the third thing about what I'm trying to achieve with them is that we are healthfully serving the talent Community outside of a16z to achieve those goals so it shouldn't feel like I am using the talent communities to help right our portfolio companies it should be symbiotic so if I'm doing the first two right creating the portco opportunity the portco upside giving them advice and our partners are seeing deal flow but it's at the expense of talent that is a very short-sighted approach and so the balance needs to be my interaction with Talent a16 Z's interaction with Talent is one that is really healthy and both sides win as a result of right whatever sort of engagements relationships hiring outcomes founding outcomes everything

that follows from the work that I do so what do I personally do you know my day-to-day is different and I have to figure out how do I achieve these goals but at least I think there's a degree of clarity about what it is that I'm trying to achieve and I'm happy to go into detail of like examples of like how this actually plays out dayto day but maybe that helps give some some scope or no this is this kind of goes back to that first point of of you being active on LinkedIn that hustle mentality that everybody in a6z seem to have um you know just going to like I didn't know that in your role as a head of talent as helping these companies to recruit better I mean recruitment is the the most difficult thing for a startup number one getting the needed talent to move forward bar on it's it's difficult for large corporations and established companies but it's super you know life or death for startups so in that sense it's an amazing role I not many funds have at least at this point all the funds are list listening right now and hearing what you do and then they're

going to open up their job positions and describe these things anyways so you're kind of like a trail basing but what I what I find very interesting in your position is that you're still there you're improving the deal flow you're you're helping to close the deals and this goes throughout the organization so even if you're in quote unquote supporting role or as you say an Operator contri Operator contributional I don't know what I wrote in an Operator Operator Operator contributing operator helping directly anyways so uh so even if you're in a in a quote unquote uh supporting role not kind of like you know uh one of those uh investors you're still actually helping with with the deal flow and closing of the deal so that's that's fascinating that's really fascinating and of course in your particular position I mean you probably meet the most Talent than anybody out there so so your role of X should be the deepest I hope yeah I mean I have the combination of God knows how how many years of taking anywhere between 12 to 16 interviews on a daily

basis year after year after year and I on top of that continue I continue to do that like yesterday I had nine calls with talent and for me personally you know it's it's critically important that I understand the way the talent sees us how they're thinking about opportunities in the portfolio over time who knows my my role might change I might get away from doing it every single moment but it's part of the the value that we provide and in fact I'm I'm nervous about right the longer I spend at a16z the further I'm going to be from feeling and knowing what the organizations are like what the talent's like what the competitive organizations were like when I talked to Talent at Riot especially say for example when I was sing valerant I understood every shooter Studio I knew their delivery models I knew how production was arranged I knew how they were compensated I knew whether they like certain leaders or not I knew the culture I knew right that's all incredibly valuable it is much easier to

attain when you're talking to people in those organizations every single day and so I think you know no matter what I do at a6z it's really important I continue to have those conversations because that's what I'm supposed to bring back to the founders whether it's you know a shooter or it's some entirely different organization or construct I should have a good amount of um yeah knowledge and awareness to be able to provide or at least to be able to connect them with people who will know those spaces so so that's that's a that leads us to an interesting conversation because you have the like scopely you were basically hiring everybody from 15 to 150 there's all the roles are needed then at Riot you go in and you staff up one of the best teams in the world and you're very focused on a specific genre Now with uh games fund one I would throw a number you know you don't have to wink or anything but I likely you have like 70 portfolio companies probably more probably less but just a just a number out there uh how do you

scale 70 portfolio like I'm using 70 I'm just trying to trying to throw a number you know I you don't have to confirm or deny I don't even know if you can speak about those but but how do you scale tens of companies at different stages in in their in their life cycle like how do you prioritize who gets help what is everyone of them is doing different I'm you know I'm I'm blanking on on all the but you have you have companies making Shooters I remember that you have companies uh making like you have a bunch of x-r teams you have companies making MMOs you have companies making sort of a um not game enges but radio player me he he was here on the podcast but that's one of you anyways I I don't want to go to the details I just want to understand like how do you scale all these different uh companies yeah so so one I'll say between game fund one and speedrun M speedrun yeah speedrun as well that's part of thead we we do have LS portfolio compan

w't say just how many but it's certainly more than onean what I'm used to actually supporting I mean yeah tens at least yeah tens yeah whatever you want to say I I do have some experience with competing priorities within a single organization but typically there was a top down ability to hopefully set directives that wasn't easy to write if I'm being honest but at least there was some framework right to top rate in but here that's not the case so I think the first thing is recognize that there are three things that we provide in terms of service the first is just off the offthe shelf resources like what can we create that's leverageable that anyone doesn't need to recreate these is like table Stakes to me it's like job descriptions and interviewing guides and best practices on closing offer something that someone can pick up if they either don't want to engage with us or they don't have the times like you know here you go here's a here's a market of information that you can look through that we have written and that we feel really strongly about and take it early it so that's part one to me part two is

guidance you know sometime it's like right now guidance like I've just made an offer to this person and we had this weird interaction like what should I do and we can talk to them about those circumstances sometimes it is hey I'm thinking about offering this person do you know anything about the work that they've done or do you know anything about their organizations you know you know that kind of stuff and so maybe we can either opine or we can introduce to someone that we know who might be able to opine or give their thoughts so that's super valuable so I'm just giving the framework before I give you the prioritization component the the last in that sort of um you know how we give guidance from my perspective is that we sit there on longer term strategic things hey you guys are planning on hiring a 100 people in the next year let's spend an hour walking through how you might achieve that and what to maybe prioritize in an effort to do it so there's to me there's different forms of guidance that we could provide the last is Network right like just straight up

we know a person for your jobs or we know people who can help you in Staffing those jobs or we know right like we can bring our Network to bear on right what it is that you're trying to accomplish um we are more able to without constraint provide number one and number two right the resources the in the moment or longer term advice because those are leverage you know they they have leverage the last one the network one is the hardest one we cannot be a placement for right the recruiting organizations within all of the portfolio companies and that is something that I'll clearly state to every single one of the port co-founders that we interact with like if you're going to hire 100 people like I am not your conduit by which you'll achieve that right let's be really really really clear however I can help you build your recruiting organization or I can help you think about what you need from those people or interviewing your recruiters now hopefully we don't get into a super tough prioritization conversation because number one even though we have a lot of portfolio companies they don't all need help at the same time they're

in different phases of development they might not be hiring or hiring much because they're in a development phase or not a growth phase we might get to a point where several of them are doing exceptionally well and I'll have to sort of rethink like okay how and can we support them all but I at least today we're not in that position for my advantage um and I think the the network side the way that we provide the maximum amount of effect is what I was mentioning about our brand position I want to create a very strong inbound funnel of talent who didn't otherwise think about going to all these startups or who don't know how to think about each one instead of forcing them to go and apply to 16 different companies and to not know which of them do what maybe they can come to a central point right me or Caitlyn who's now on my team and we can have a discussion about their interests and then we can help them maneuver across the port folio and we can filter to a degree on behalf of all

the founders um now ultimately we can't do it for everyone but at least we can probably create a much higher volume of relevant candidate flow than they would otherwise have and we have the skills and capability to be able to look at those backgrounds and say we think they are good at X Y or Z in a way that the candidate can't quite articulate to the portfolio because they don't understand what's available across the entire breath does that make sense I mean mean I'm just listening and feeling blessed like this is this is magnificent stuff man like so so you actually said three things but I I caught four because off-the-shelf instructions you know guidance to to run your many Founders don't know how to build recruitment I had to build it from from the ground up I I know just from my perspective I was like I have been recruiting for a long time but when I have to do everything from the ground up with no recruiter it's a total different ball game so definitely any kind of off-the-shelf uh guidance or instructions or playbooks is is phenomenal thing guidance so meaning individual cases that that's phenomenal

just just getting some help like that's where you normally connect with your investors but they're busy they're doing other things so they have to connect now with others but you have you're the Central Point strategy of course like you you the companies that a16z invests because of the size of the fund have to be unicorns like that's the goal with with every company like it it's really depending on the on the fun size and then ambitious yeah let's put it ambitious or unicorns unicorn is a nice word uh so so of course their ambition to grow has to be in line with their ambition of of size that they want to reach and the the influence they want to reach and that's in in that sense having that that ability to help them with strategy because a lot of companies like hey we want to make a shooter all right we need to hire 150 200 people if you haven't done that before that's a tough tough task to do and then boom Jordan comes and like let me tell you how we built up valerant so that's a that's that's a pretty awesome thing but you mentioned a fourth thing which is funneling talent because you you are the central point where I think there's uh

to my knowledge correct me if I'm wrong there's like a way you can put your your resume into the a16z folder or something I haven't done it so but uh but somebody mentioned it and you're not looking for a job no I so so no I haven't I haven't I haven't done it uh after this everybody who's listening put put your name in and Jordan will check you out but uh but you can you can apply to some Central uh piece and then if if you're a person that is interested in gaming and they probably go to you and your team member sorry I I'll briefly share how that works like I have um I'll post it on my LinkedIn and maybe I I don't know Misha if it can be shared somewhere with the podcast notes but um we do have a form where people can just give us very simple the form says it takes four minutes I'm looking at it right now yeah it's just like what's your name can I have your LinkedIn profile What stages are you interested in and effectively it's us generating a prospects list of everyone who might want to work at a startup but hasn't thought about how to sort of go about doing that and we use

that list constantly whenever new jobs open up or I just actually scroll through it on a daily and weekly basis to find new folks and I do my outbounds and I go talk to those people and I've already I think I've had like 880 introductions as a result of people who've signed up for this over the last month so it's truly valuable and this is just on the scale of my LinkedIn and without us putting it on right branded channels and all the other things that will I think have a have a powerful outcome and this this what gets that number three part the like I don't want us to do it at the expense of talent I want to create really great opportunities for talent and for it to make sense for the portfolio companies and by having them not try and direct one-onone with each portco I think it maximizes the opportunity that we do the Arbitrage to find the right role for the right talent and for the right PCO you know it's like it's all got to fit together so this is the the benefit of working at a16z you know there are other

funds but I don't know if they have the same ability to use the megaphone the way that we do because of again all of the foundation that has been built by many people here at the firm who've been incredible at right just all the all the work of creating a reputable brand that people know that we mean what we say when it's like we believe in our companies we believe in the opportunity and people believe in that yeah awesome books as well hard things about hard things and so forth I read them all so those those help to build the reputation as well I wanted to ask so yeah the funnel toal actually we're not going to put in a link if you really want to work at startup you better find your own link and find where to apply a16z let's let's put in a little bit of a hurdle there so uh so so uh one thing about about the uh about your work is there Talent sharing between portfolio companies because as you said and in my experience portfolio companies go through different stages they use different type of talent sometimes you hire Talent and that Talent is not a fit that doesn't mean that the talent is is poor or or just

you know it's just not a fit for this company and you want to say hey this person wasn't a fit but but uh would you know if somebody else like do they contact you or like how does it work some of them do yeah so I have both Founders and recruiters within those organizations or like operational leads who will send me folks that they talked to and felt like they should be shared not all founders have that same mentality I think some are probably more sharp elbow where they'd rather not be sharing back out talent to to organizations that they might observe as competitors which I think is totally fair right like ultimately what they think as their talent strategy is is very reasonable um I'm of the mind that um Rising tide lifts all boats at least in the context of gaming like I I think actually valerin is a fantastic example of this right valerant came into the market and it was actually a creative to Counter-Strike yeah counter strike was flagging and then valerant came out and now Counterstrike is more successful

than it ever was so in my view there is this unique non- cannibal type reality in gaming that creates a dynamic where Talent sharing might actually be good for all of the parties involved but there are scenarios where I don't think the founders or teams either agree with that which is fine or have the time and that's fine too that's why I I like to be the initial point for the talent because if they go direct to these companies which first the chance that they do that is low because these companies don't have as much brand as you would prefer them to have especially not the ones who are still um stealth right there are plenty of companies that we have not disclosed so how are they going to get inbound applicants this is not going to happen so that's problem one but if we are the first stop for them we can help find the next opportunity if we're aware of their existence and we know that they had a conversation and we know it didn't turn into something and then we can right move them over and say actually you fit better for this other organization so um

I don't think it's a general practice to share across organizations I don't think it will ever become one but I do get plenty of people who share back with me when they feel compelled to do so yeah I I get it I mean you're a good karma type of a guy so I I figured that you would like like people to share but but I know some people are more Cutthroat and they don't want to give anybody any Edge but I get it I get it that's fine um let's just shift gears and talk about interviewing so as you said even now you're interviewing like nine people a day I don't want to count how many people you've you've interviewed over your 10year career but let's say it's multiple thousands of people so I wanted to ask you like like based on your very very um Broad and you know just an amazing experience like what are the um what makes a good interview and what are the the common pitfalls in in an interview process it's going to you're going to have to ran me in on this subject

because it's something that I could go on for I think days discussing so if I if I fall off a cliff bring me back just just give me like uh like few strategies few few key pointers I'll start with the like what what is a good process to me it's one that's clear to the to both the candidate and the team like we know what we're doing for assessment and how we're going to do it what the steps are what what happens in each one of the steps it's reasonably fast um and that's good both for the candidate and for the team for a variety of reasons it's considerate of the talent especially if you're hiring High skill Talent um if you're hiring High skill Talent the problem is high skill Talent is often highly sought after and so anything that you're pushing the cost of interviewing onto the candidate meaning they have to do more take-home tests in time without you being there or they need to you're creating a dynamic where you are hurting your chance of hiring them and you are um increasing widening the gulf between you and them and understanding who they

are how they operate a number of things um it should clearly assess needed skills and behaviors and not a whole bunch of other stuff which is an important character uh important element to me and it just gives the best chance to forecast success in the job meaning like your vetting skills that are critically important and it enables you to see into the future they're a lot of interview process that I think just do all sorts of assessment but not actually relevant assessment so they don't achieve the goal so that's like that to me is the the general characteristics of of a good process the common pitfalls to me are like wasted interview time you only have so much time you better use it very thoughtfully and when you're not you are throwing away incredibly valuable opportunity and at a very high cost right when you get either the wrong information or no information for a decision that will have a huge impact every higher especially early is right a potential um Step change up or down in

terms of your ability to meet your your goals as an organization and so if you only have 10 hours with a candidate and you waste three of those hours that is a huge huge mistake from my perspective so wasted interview time second is duplicated assessment like you shouldn't have five people assessing the same thing unless you intend to do it and you think it's super important that you do it in most cases people don't intend to they just do it by mistake the third is misunderstanding the role or skills needed right not clarifying up front what's the job and what do we need from those people and right what are the behaviors we want to see um the fourth is a sort of like um an aside it's a behavior of interviewing which is purposeful antagonis antagonistic interviewing like trying to piss people off trying to them uncomfortable trying to see how they react I I've seen and heard a lot of this in interviewing and it's like don't it's not good because even when you find candidates who behave the way that you want when faced with antagonis they probably won't accept your job so not a good way to actually I've had that

now now that you said it I was like this is crazy like who would do that and now I remembered I had it and I refused the job even it's a weird it's a weird approach to doing what what you want is to figure out how they operate under stress but like there are other ways to do it and then the other common pitfalls to me are unstructured interviewing you know just not really clarifying what you're doing and then there's other examples of this like a panel interview coming in and interviewing in front of 10 people at once for a role that isn't really well suited for a panel interview so that's like um artists often end up in this scenario where they need to do a portfolio review in front of eight people and it's like when would they ever have to meet eight strangers and defend their work in the natural course of their day-to-day they never would and so it creates these really negative experiences both for them and and how they're perceived so that's the common pit balls I'm happy to go into like any of let let me just ask you questions based on my experience as a as a hiring manager or or whatever in my experience in hiring and you just correct me all

the mistakes that I've done so um one thing I always say always test and people are like always I was like always test uh because it shows to me like you tell me if this is wrong but this has been my my Mantra is like the test has to be like let's let's have it at four hours maximum eight hours it can be more than eight hours uh let's give the person a maximum amount of time sometimes if it's a technical person or an artist we've even uh We've pull them into a slack Channel where they can interact while they're doing it so it's almost like they're doing their job and and it's there's no time limits you know we we are accommodating we just want to know that you tell us when it's going to be ready but if there's something happening this is not your job so so of course um the reason for that is is because it allows to assess the skills which you know the probably the the most important part the other parts are very important but skills is of course the first thing that you're you're hiring against uh and it allows to test for motivation uh if if you feel that you don't want to do even a test because

you're so uh talented then then that PO a big risk but that's again a very European mental mindset because hiring and hiring is easy firing is impossible in in Europe so so we have to we have to be you know we do our DD really well is that a is that a wrong approach um evaluating hard skills and trying to gain confidence in your assessment is totally appropriate now the challenge that you face maybe more so in less regulated environments than in in maybe European environments which I'm not going to go into the depth of the legal consideration but um you face the challenge of other competing organizations being willing to move more quickly than you or to accept the cost of the assessment onto themselves instead of externalizing it onto the candidate so I'll give the really specific example of I'm hiring an engineer an engineer in the United States might have 10 other active interview processes if they're looking

at opportunity and it's not that they're too lazy it's not that they don't care it's that they have a job and they have other organizations who are going to exhibit to them what they think is a higher degree of um uh being involved or believing in them so I'll give you the differentiation to me on this if I want to do a 4our test on an engineer then I probably shouldn't say to them go do it as homework they're not going to do it they're about two-thirds of them I'm guessing will likely ditch the test all together a third of them might do it and they're probably going to be the most desperate ones the ones that actually can't find the jobs that the other companies or don't have competing opportunities the alternative is I say I believe in you as a candidate I am super jazzed about the opportunity to work with you I want you to come in with our team for a full day interview and then you spend four hours of that inter interview pairing them with another engineer to do the coding test you get

the same assessment you get the same Insight hopefully you don't alienate them you don't give the opportunity for them to just walk away they're probably not going to see that test and literally walk out of the room like goodbye that'd be a really weird thing right so I think you need to show them a degree of um being committed to their candidacy and not sort of saying to them I need to see you pass this test before I give you a real shake so so you gave perfect context of course the test is not where you start the test is towards the end of the process at that point you know the person feels like oh man this is a great organization I really like them we like you like we're we're we're practically there like let's go out on a date let's tested out how it would be you know living dayto day or so so that yes you're absolutely right and and in my experience like having forone tests a lot caused a lot of issues where the person wasn't qualified ified maybe to do their job as well as was intended and

that caused into a separation and then especially with a startup you kind of want to see show the traction that you're holding on to people rather than rotating people and so for that I would push for testing because then you're making sure that the ones you're bringing on are Keepers and that shows that that you have more stability rather than rotating that was my thinking uh after after a while and I want I want to at least hone in on what your testing this is where I actually the BG mes um I'm going to try a way over simplified example but I think it helps communicate this say I'm hiring a cashier and I say that one of the hard skills that I think they need is the ability to count money and deal with the till and you know figure out change I could state that as math which I would say is far too broad and problematic for a variety of reasons because included in math is trigonometry and calculus and and right a number of very Concepts yeah or I could say

arithmetic which is adding subtracting dividing and multiplying which actually probably are the elements of math that are necessary for someone to effectively be a cashier if I am that detailed and I can characterize it's not math it's arithmetic that I'm searching for and it's these four operating capabilities that people should be able to do the plus minus right divide multiply then when I assess those it's that I know or not that they have the functional expertise now I say this because when you go up a level into more complex jobs like engineering if someone says they have the ability to write code or to do backend you know developments like it's so overgeneralized it's crazy and when you just let some Maybe Junior engineer in your or go and assess that their definition of what that looks like and your definition potentially as a leader in the organization might be entirely separate from one another and that creates massive issues in either over or under assessing Talent as they come into your

organization I do want to clarify like skills tests yes skills tests still need to be highly defined I think to be effective and prognosticative you know ability to forecast future performance by actually assessing the things that are important for the role see this is why this is why you're ahead of talent like I didn't have this conversation was like uh another thing that that kind of came to my mind when I was um when I was hiring in in U in corporations uh I got a couple of times uh um I was in a situation where I was hiring My Own Boss and and usually this person would be in an SVP position or so forth and they would be coming in on the stealth mode sitting in a cabin at somewhere on the side of the building and you know they would be rotating a lot and what what mymo was people listening this who I've interviewed know this so they were going through such a you know like everybody in the company all the Studio heads would be interviewing them all the CFOs and Coos and so forth I would come in I

would like man you're you're probably tired um you want to take a walk and then I'll just take them out of the room and just go on a walk and I would say everybody's been asking you all these questions all day you ask me like I can tell you everything about this organization about the challenges you're facing um you know what can I tell you about this and let's have let's just have a conversation we took like an hour walk and and I felt that everybody I interviewed really liked it because they kept in touch with me afterwards but was that a prop like what do you think about like if if you would have heard you're in the same organiz let's say it would have been Riot would been walking around Santa Monica I'm just taking out these these Heavy Hitters for a walk what would you tell me like what are you doing dude like what's happening or like was that a right move it depends on the goal like um if I look at the entire expanse of what I'm trying to evaluate with a candidate say I have eight skills one through eight I would assign them to interviewers whatever they were and I'd

probably within the skills have sub yes you know behaviors especially if they're not hard skills if they're soft skills that I want to see exhibitions of or and in fact we might see an antithetical experience like someone who does the opposite behavior that we want to see if the belief is that we have that expanse covered already and we have this separate discussion that enables the candidate to better understand the organization or to ask questions that's great but if you are doing that and you think you're going to come out with an assessment of the candidate I would suggest it is not ineffective like your one part I would suggest it's it's somewhat ineffective unless you describe to them what you're doing and why so this is another thing that I I often advise interviewers interviewing teams they hate they often are like very um reticent on this I think you should tell candidates at the start of your discussion each one of the discussions what you are trying to get out of your interaction hey my goal is to understand your management techniques and that

includes how you hire how you set expectations how you know you might sort of lay out the common things that you're going to evaluate and then if you say and the way that I do that is by asking you to ask me questions so you can better understand the organization and I am seeking to understand how thoughtful you are and what amount of sort of foresight you put into doing this maybe now you're setting them up for success but it is a I've never heard of this being an effective technique nor have I seen research that suggest that you should approach it that way um typically the most effective technique at least from the research is seeking previous behavioral examples and understanding them in the context of that previous sort of you know space because they're not in the mindset and they shouldn't be of where you are they spend every day all day thinking about where they were and to come in and to be prepared to tell you about where they're going is sort of like an ineffective way to understand how they'll behave yeah I'll give you a more a little bit more context I failed on on the context so yes every time every person was interviewing for certain aspects mine

was more about product and Market that I was uh which are my for my fores and so we were talking a lot about product strategy and Market strategy and what they have seen and so forth and they were asking me about like what what are you thinking about this what and it was like a it was like a very friendly conversation but it was also for me important because um what I like to have with with my managers is that I'm I'm not the type of a person with one truth I talk to too many people where I where I can't say like this is the way there's many ways and so I enjoy very much of like hey these are the many ways of doing what would you do in in this type of a situation I kind of want to see how the person um is able to take even conflicting uh information conflicting practices and then conclude their own decisions of how they would approach this whe whether it's goto Market strategies which are again you can have absolutely conflicting Market

strategies that would work equally well and and so so I'm trying to like always like provide more context and see how the decision- making is at play I think the the it it can work the challenge is in some cases it might not provide some of the potential candidates the framework to be successful when they might have been successful so I think you probably get more false negatives in that approach as a result of how you interact because you're not sort of like giving them the ability to very clearly you know answer a question that you're providing them you're sort of leaving it to them to generate that interaction so it's not to say you might not hire someone great it also sounds like you were angling to hire someone that you wanted as your manager but not necessarily angling to hire the best potential manager for the organization those two things could be at odds that's uh Jordan see you changed my mind I mean I'm not that I'm doing it like this was years back but but uh but even now like this is absolutely great I shouldn't have done it see we didn't have anybody

tell I think it's totally fair I just think you know there are different motivations up yeah yeah yeah but you're absolutely right I'm I'm trying to hire a manager who I enjoy talking to I enjoy going for a for a walk on one-on ones and talk about complicated um topics and um and see see this this is what I mean uh so so let's let's uh let's switch gears um culture that comes a lot with with all the hiring um many ways quite nebulous uh if I would say it's like not like everybody knows how to build a culture what goes into it uh even definitions of cultures if you ask 10 people could be all different so why is and this is actually where this is the LinkedIn conversations where where you engage and I think there were some others this kind of led to my thinking uh why is hiring as culture so important and how do you take that into account in the hiring process okay I'm G I'm going I'm going to try and provide frame of something that's totally outside of a company for a second and then come back to it yes in

the most quote unquote simple relationship like two partners you know who are either married or live together simple right like no right relationships are not simple even between two people where you think the common objective of just happiness and partnership are like pretty clearly understood they are not and in fact many relationships work in with totally different approaches right if you ask all of your friends and everyone you know who've been in long-term Partnerships that are healthy like they probably all act very differently dayto day so that's at like the nucleus of two humans interacting with one another if I expand like a another layer out I look at like a sports team sports teams are like at least reasonably small typically they have right a pretty clear definition of success winning the season or whatever but most coaches have entirely different strategies for coaching their players players players can be very effective in one organization but not another because of the coaching strategy or the playing strategy of what they expect of all of

those players I'm not going to use any sport to keep this sort of like you know hopefully uh uh globally friendly there's there's no single standard of operating and hiring a team and how everyone acts in that team to get to right an outcome companies are like a whole another level of complexity Beyond right those two things you have potentially hundreds of people all of them interacting towards a a probably far more nebulous set of goals that are ever and so the idea that there's like a right or a wrong I just want to put this like there is no right or wrong right there's there's strategies that are probably universally wrong is my guess there are probably strategies that are more likely to succeed but all of them are bets that are being made with the input of what is the product what's the market what does that mean in terms of the talent that we need to attract and for them to organize if I am building a factory you know I don't NE necessarily want a whole bunch of like inventive people who want to change everything and are super creative I'm like no like

you're going to put the thing on the thing and it's going to keep going down the line and if that bothers you like you can't be here right but if I am building the next sort of GPU like if I'm Jensen Wang and I'm building Nvidia like I want the opposite of the factory worker and so the culture that I need and the the values the behaviors I need from my employees is entirely different because my business objectives are very different so I want to start with that like culture quotee unquote is really important because it supports the the sort of strategy for whatever it is that you're trying to do as a company and better understanding who is needed to accomplish that and why is very helpful when you're going towards you know whatever objective it is that you have but I want to be careful about using the word culture because I think it's a lazy thing I think people say culture because they haven't done the work to Define and articulate what they mean in terms of behaviors or values and why they're important in the organization and to

consistently over and over realign the entire company in all of the potential checkpoints where they can do that it's during a hiring process it's during right uh uh uh performance reviews it's during right any sort of interaction where you might see something that's out of whack and so it's far more effective to say the culture is these series of behaviors and values that we want to see exhibited and to like write them down and challenge them over and over again and potentially change them they should be you know interactive things living and breathing if you decide this isn't actually serving us your business strategy has changed or your assumptions Pro proven to be right uh not the right assumptions then you should ditch them but you should try and characterize them if you look at you know Amazon I think they're the best example of this they have 14 leadership principles the principles are very clearly defined you know you're Frugal you're right a lot you think big you right they could they could articulate all of them and then they fight about in a healthy way fight

to me is not a bad word they argue about was that or wasn't that an an example of the behavior that we want to see in our organization and when they do Talent reviews they argue about were those examples of what we want to see and when they hire someone they say is that what we mean when we say customer Obsession was this person customer obsessed in this other place and so they find all of these interwoven sort of moments to have these conversations that constantly help everyone have a shared understanding of quote unquote culture because when people start with that what they're really saying is like I like this person you know I I would sit there at a bar with them or I would go on a plane with them the quote unquote airplane test what they're not saying is yeah they exhibit these 14 specific values that we think or 10 or eight or whatever number that we think lead us to the the goals that we have so I think once you've done the work of defining them as an organization which is hard to be honest then you get to build your assessment then you get to figure out what

questions you ask then you get to figure out how to evaluate them all of those help do that and so like to me some of the Practical tools that help you actually interview against quote unquote culture or the values and behaviors are you you set and Define the behaviors you use write a a structured interview format you require interviewers to tell you the examples of the behavior they don't get to say the synthesis I think they are are not culturally aligned it's like I didn't ask you that I asked you were they collaborative I asked you were they Frugal I asked you and then they need to describe like well I think they were because and then they would say what the example was now as a leader you get to look at that and say I agree or I disagree and if you do either you say to the team this is why I agree or disagree because you're helping create right that shared interpretation of what it means to display the values or behaviors you want to see in the organization the last thing is you do not allow factionalized interviewing this is something that becomes worse the longer the the bigger the organization but if a team is Like

Only We interview the members of our team and this other team's Like Only We interview it creates this world where these very distinct subcultures can start to write rear their heads within the company and so it should be that now we get to invite an engineer from another team and we get to invite an artist from another team to be part now maybe we represent more of the panel but we certainly need others to be here because that's how you keep this substrate of interwoven fabric of values because if you don't allow others you create this like you know Echo chamber within factions of of a larger or growing company awesome this I mean uh I I hold heart wholeheartedly agree I remember like at a company that I was working once um I was a hiring manager and they told me just see if if the person is is um you know is a cultural fit and I was

like I was like I don't I don't know what that means that mean yeah ex and then the values were were one of those values you could pick from a from a from a value box where Executives you know I'm not going to mention any of them because people could could go in and like they were so they're so high flying so General uh that it could apply almost to any company so wasn't able to use it and I I remember like when when he I wrote here values and then from values who built your assessment there's actually something that I I read from a book uh I forgot which one but Patrick lenion was the writer I forgot the name of the book and and he was really describing of yeah it wasn't five dysfunctions it was one of the other ones I remember the cases he was like the guy was an executive and he was running a restaurant and like like as an off time thing as a retired executive and then he was able to uh to hire like the Super Crew or change them anyways but but in that it really went into like certain aspects they were looking in in

a person let's say humility and it wasn't just like if I would say we could just hire against humility my perception of humility might be totally different than somebody else's but they would write a lot of different questions that are gouging humility and what you're looking from the answers for uh to to see if if there's perceptions of humility so that was at least what was helping me again I didn't have Jordan uh to sit down with me and tell me what to do uh we didn't have a6d as an investor but but that was a that was a good good help and and um and and probably like you're helping at at a 100x of of that level I mean if I give if I give a really brief example and you know someone from Riot might be upset that I'm sharing this but I don't I don't think they will customer customer orientation is a big value for them it's one of the the the very clear things that they care about they call it player Focus but it's basically customer orientation yes and they have that defined as five things setting expectations anticipating needs

resolving issues building relationships and and basically dog fooding self- adopting and then they have definitions of what bad sort of example of this is a mediocre example and a great example of setting expectations or of anticipating needs so it's no longer like a what do we mean when we say we're customer focused or player Focus it's actually like here are the five exact things that we mean here's a scale of what good and looks like on each of those right different sub uh sort of variations of the competency but how do you interview against uh player Focus like what a let's say um a designer well designer is too easy designer is so player focused automatically let's say a programmer comes in uh back end let's throw back end the furthest away from the customer you got to figure out um number one customer is a Loosely defined thing right like they might have and and reason ably different customers they might see you know the internal team that they're interacting with as the

customer they might see their manager as the customer really the first thing you want to figure out is how do they Define their customers and why and so you might ask tell me about a time that you overd delivered for a customer that's like the first question you're going to get a sense for like well what do they think is the customer why did they think they were overd delivering what were the original expectations right they're hopefully going to start providing you with this story you typically want to give them a broad expanse to answer the question see if they can give you the stuff at first if they don't start telling you those things you might follow up well did you set expectations if so how right what was the format of that conversation all that kind why did you think that they were the customer what about this other customer if they didn't say it and see how they respond so as you as an interviewer you want to start by giving them maximum opportunity to give you all the right answers if they're not giving them just there's like an Omission you should pressure them and try and give them like hey I'm the breadcrumb I'm looking for these other things if they give you the opposite or something you don't understand then you can sort of like hey that doesn't make sense to me why are

they the customer I would think this is the customer and see how they react but you start with a behavioral question that you think is likely to solicit a story like this and then you ask a series of follow-ups that are intended to pull out the behaviors that you know you're already seeking awesome damn where have you been almost 40 I'm having this um all right Switching gears to individuals um how would you advise talent to evaluate an opportunity how would I okay so um I will start by saying wide to narrow if I'm a candidate and I'm or Prospect or whatever I'm looking at my next job I want to start by thinking about the market of the product you know where are where are they operating um I'll give an I give an example to help sort of Define this but I'll just give the overview the second is the company so like you know are they a Challenger are they funded are they early are they late are they in you know a sort of um efficiency era you

know what's going on with the company itself um team and manager who am I going to be working with right what's my role going to be and and my pay that kind of stuff um so my I'll give my example of joining Ry right I was joining a gaming company uh a market that had really sort of like universally agreed High upside as a as a longer term there's a belief that right this this Market was growing they are known to be high margin businesses which is good there's a a a sort of recognition that there was a talent Supply issue which is good for employees generally and they were basically a challenger against incumbents that had already displayed success and they were rapidly On The Rise which meant if I just take my role out of the equation the substrate was they likely have lots of resources lots of opportunity and more work than they know how to accomplish which means people who come into that organization and who do well might be able to then ACR responsibility and knowledge and

learning and any number of things they were also enough though where I'd probably have tutelage people to learn from you know sort of Role Models if you go really early you might miss on some of that and so it's important to consider like what am I getting and what am I losing by going to an organization but I did have a bit more capped upside at that point right my my upside because I was joining a little bit later wasn't so massive because I got to a company that was like really sort of you know on the way so that was a bit of a trade the last part was I got to join slim I got to join Stephen Lim the head of the valerant studio I believed in the product I believed in what I was going to do but to be honest like I would have joined slim on anything because I believed he was really smart I believed he had done really cool things not just cool like he was successful and was going to do more really cool and successful things I wanted to follow him and I believed he belied believed in me having someone who believes in you in an organization that you believe in is such a good sort of you know cross-section

you need to think about like what is the market doing and then do I believe in the company in the space I think a lot of people are super shortsighted on this they think like what's my base salary you know what am I gonna sort of get right out of the gate what's my title it's like man you're losing sight like you got to look way past all of that in fact when I joined Riot to to put my money where my mouth is literally I took a 50% pay cut wow I did not care I knew that they were on a very different trajectory I knew that they were going to have a shortage of talent for their broad needs and I knew I felt confident I could prove myself especially under a leader who seemed to believe in me and so if I can give advice to anyone it's to think like that don't think about tomorrow think about five years from now and whether or not you believe that you can put yourself in a position which I think is much harder to be honest at a big company than it is at either a small or medium rapidly growing company that's also it's really cool that you told about the the pay cut that you took because

that you believed it was an investment from you you believe that you're going to get less now but you're going to get more in the future based on the trajectory that you're expecting um and um that also also kind of States a point that it's not only about base salary when you're looking for top talent pretty clearly like it's not it's not it shouldn't be and like should be able to make bets now some people can't they have mortgages and they have Financial commitments they have things that disbar them from having that degree of flexibility but then they might not be right for the or in the first place and the true sometimes like you just can't have everyone that you want to have from a functional expertise standpoint all right cherry on the top we started talking about money so so this is maybe if if somebody was sleeping till this point this is the most valuable part I don't know if they're sleeping to this point but but if this is this is the uh the part that is for any anybody who's listening

to this and that is well except those who have exited and not going to look for for a anyway G to cut that part so this is for most of the uh of the listeners is like how do you negotiate an offer so you know how do I how do I get the uh the the maximum and yeah it's not even the maximum how how do I get the fair share like it's hard to say because you said you took a 50% cut and that was the right decision so so how do I how do I just negotiate the uh the offer that's it basically I think you start by accepting that most great companies know they need to pay you competitively either upon hire or after when they see your performance I think most people start from a belief that like the company has it out for you and wants to make the most on every hire and like they're dumb they're not dumb they're not evil most companies are not maybe they are but they probably don't have great talent that you believe in and you know know any number of things so start by just like do I want to work there are there other people I believe in there you know like if yes then start

from a belief that they and you are on the same page they want to take care of you because they want to keep you that's like I think it helps the rest of this entire conversation the second is give as little as you can up front don't say I expect X or want y I need this title or whatever like just go into the process if you're excited about the company do do not give information because you are effectively giving them the sort of Pathway to your heart they'll know what to push on or whatever else you care about that isn't money and like you don't want to give them that leverage to be able to sell you super easily so that's part two part three is Dazzle them you know just be an incredible candidate show off your skills understand their business exhibit that you care think about their competitors and know about their competitors and why you choose them over others like in my case why did I care about Riot versus Activision or versus Blizzard or versus like if I can speak about all their business models and why I think think ri's better position like I show I'm thinking about this and I want to be here so that's number three number four is when you get the offer

display humility and appreciation like thank you I'm so excited that you believe that I can be here and like I I am just like I I am appreciating that you are willing to give me an offer you can always tell them this doesn't quite line up with what I need it shouldn't be what I can earn or what I can competitively make you're starting to create this weird Dynamic it should always be about what you need to live your life so I think the minute you start talking about competitors at that point on pay you're creating a weird dynamic with the team I think it's much smarter to say I need X Y and Z if you want to give them a reason it should be something that is like discreet I have a mortgage or I have these other things and so it's not that like I'm not passionate about what you're doing it's that I can't sell my house to take the job and so like it's either I get it or I don't you shouldn't play play games you should say once you've done the you've like dazzled them and whatever now you can say I need X and if they

give you X you better accept X or or you're going to really offend them for a long time they'll remember that forever right so like don't don't play any games and only give them numbers if you're going to actually move forward so that's the last thing I would say there and then be realistic you cannot have uncapped upside and high base salary and if you can reevaluate if you want to go there because that's a really untenable compensation strategy for organization they are not managing their funds well and they will explode so you don't want them to to make really bad choices systemically and if they're doing that for you giving you really high base and a ton of equity it's like H they're not very smart financially or strategically and so you should already be asking questions about the the viability of the business itself so I think that's all the broad stuff and then the last thing I want to sort of impart is recognize that being top of of band makes you a Target you do not want to come in after there are 17 approvals on your offer because everyone's going to be watching

you like a hawk it is so much better to come in regular to crush your work to exhibit value and then for them to want to give you the money because they want to keep you if you're doing really well and the business is doing well so like that gets back to point one they're smart they want to take care of you their talent strategy probably has right the orientation of we value great talent and value means we pay for and do what we need to keep them that's that's really really really great advice really great and sort of like a long-term advice not like like the other the YouTube here how you get the best possible offer in two minutes I wanted to ask you one more thing regarding the offer since you're helping startups uh a lot of people probably are joining startups for the first time there's employee stock option plant and and things like these that that are difficult to understand I've noticed especially in Europe uh depending of course in the country uh my experience with Germany was was different than in than in Finland like people didn't really understand in Germany they're almost afraid of even seeing employee

stock option PL they're like what is this like this is I need to get a lawyer just start looking at this and that kind of stuff so uh you know anecdotal information just just on on my behalf but um how how do you help the founders or or you know the portfolio companies to kind of Leverage that stock option plan like how should be communicated to people joining um so that they understand that upside I think part one is establishing trust so like you need find to to find ways to exhibit trusting Behavior throughout the process such that when you get to the point of this very complicated subject that people might not ever understand if if I'm being really Frank they at least trust that you are on their side so if I if I can say anything it's like do a bunch of things so that when it comes to something complicated they trust your assessment or what you're telling them in a simplified format that's number one number two is be as transmissive as you

can about the the stock option plan about whatever it is that you want to share whether it's your valuation or or what have you and take the time to sit down and talk them through and to get them as much of a perspective as they can because ultimately you are selling the dream and you them understanding that is important and then I think the final thing is introducing them to other people this is where actually you like saying go get the opinion of others and then you introduce them to people who've won on Equity like I am the person to put you know anyone who's like I don't value Equity I'm like let me tell you about my experiences with Equity you know like I'm so happy to have that conversation so like I think that they need to establish trust they need to be expressive and share there's only a degree of understanding they should encourage others to go research and understand as best they can but these are complex financial instruments and then the last part is I think finding ways to push introduce them into other people who might sell from their own perspective their experience or even the bad one talk to someone who didn't have a good

experience so you can come in feeling at least as informed as possible about this topic yeah those are those are really good things I I noticed like there there were a different even even sometimes there were scenarios that people think that they knew about equity and they would come in and they would uh like demand a certain percentage of the company or or or that kind of a thing like they like it would be convoluted but then again they demand it but they would be in options and you're like okay so this is like this is even an un how delution works and yeah there's yeah do you know how options for work versus stocks it's like all these type of elements the taxations so all those are different so I'm not like laughing that somebody not understanding because they are very complicated and I'll be honest like I'm I'm even now like presumably let's say I'm getting an advisory stock option pot it's still like wait a minute now I have to think about it what is this company's trajectory what is this what is that now Unity made a move how does this company go work so it is a it is very

complicated of a thing and I I do know a thing or two about options in stock and still so there's nothing to laugh about that's why I wanted to ask a question because a lot of the time uh selling that dream selling that upside is is is very difficult especially since there's over 90% chance that it goes to zero so that's uh that's another another part it's hard this is where character matters to me like I I really believed in the character of the leaders of Riot and I think they tried to take care of and did take care of all the early people and as much as they couldn't explain maybe all the the elements of how the stock and right ownership were working when it came down to it they wanted to make everyone whole and give them participation and in Riot success and they did and so like that's like ultimately there's some amount of um ambiguity you're going to have as a potential employee you're never going to receive the degree of insight you would prefer for a lot of reasons and then it comes down to like do I believe in these

people and how they're going to think about their employees and treat them awesome uh well Jordan merer if this was your first podcast you you crushed it I mean here's to to many to come I'm sure you'll be uh you'll be a sought-after guest in uh much larger podcast than this one so thank you so much for and thank you so much for sharing the only bad thing is is that we're having this conversation now and not 10 years ago so well actually 10 years ago you just started so that would have been a valuable conversation would been weird yeah it was it was my pleasure it was my pleasure I was so happy to be here um I just want to say thank you for giving me the time