You're losing the best ones

The best people you'll ever recruit have one thing in common.

They want to leave a mark.

Not just execute your thing well. Not just ship on time and hit the metrics. They want to author something – to be able to point at a decision, a direction, a piece of the company and say: I shaped that.

If your company doesn't offer that, they will figure it out. Usually in the first 90 days.

Here's how they figure it out: you override them.

Not once…founders override people all the time, for good reasons. But the pattern. They bring a recommendation. You redirect it toward the picture you already had. They push back. You explain why your version is right. They do your version. You call it a great outcome.

They're now updating their resume or not invested like the could be.

I've watched a founder do this.

Brilliant person.

Genuinely compelling vision. Tells every candidate in every interview: I want people who challenge me, who bring their own point of view, who help me see things I can't see, I’m not a micromanager.

Then spends every 1:1 walking people back to the picture he already had.

The A-players leave. The people who stayed got very good at guessing what he wanted before he asked. The company became a very sophisticated instrument for rendering one person's specific imagination.

That might be fine!

Some companies need exactly that.

But you have to know which company you're building…because great people are watching how you actually behave, not what you say in the job interview.

If the picture is fixed, say so. You will attract fewer people. The ones you attract will be exactly right.

If the picture is genuinely open, then defend it.

Reward the pushback. Let someone else's idea win sometimes. Let it show.

You don't get both.

Yallah Habibi,

Jon

P.S.

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