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

You can't change the people you hire

21 Jul 2025 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

0:32

A short YouTube monologue by Lenny Rachitsky arguing that hiring decisions should be decisive: if you ever consider firing someone, do it immediately. The speaker reflects on a personal heuristic, regrets hiring on gut hoping to change people, and likens attempting to change employees to trying to change partners in romantic relationships.

Chapters

The heuristic I have is if I ever think, should I fire this person even once? I should fire them immediately. The biggest mistake I made in my early career was I would hire people because I liked them on gut and I would think that I could change them. It's kind of like in romantic relationships, it never works out well. If you get married to someone and you go, okay, well, this is going to be a great relationship as long as I can convert them to Christianity or I can change their parents or their personality or whatever it is. I've just found that I've never been able to change someone. You can never mentor someone into being a good employee.