Lenny RachitskyHost of Lenny's Podcast | Author of Lenny's Newsletter

"In six months, if I'm telling you what to do, I've hired the wrong person."

4 Jul 2025 · 1 min

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0:35

A short monologue by Lenny Rachitsky about hiring and leadership expectations: managers should hire people who will become autonomous leaders within ~6 months. The speaker sets a high performance bar, communicates that bar to new hires, and frames success as calibrating until the hire is the one directing work rather than the manager.

Chapters

In six months, if I'm telling you what to do, I've hired the wrong person. Number one, it's a reminder for myself to keep my bar super high and just not settle. The second effect of that is that I say that to people when they come on the team because it communicates to them that that's my bar and that's how they know they'll be successful and something to kind of work towards. The third thing is for the both of us, which is it helps me and the person operate on a different level, where the goal is not did you hit this okr? Did you hit this goal? The meta goal becomes are we calibrating enough? Are we actually getting into a sp where in six months you're the one telling me what needs to be done.