Max Levchin explains why B-players hire C-players

The Steve Jobs quote, a players hire A players, B players hire C players, is profoundly true. There should be an asterisk explaining why this is true. And the reason for it is fear. A players love working with other A players because they know the demands of the job and the team dynamics just make them better. So you want to have people who challenge you and tell you, hey, I know you're an A player, but that just wasn't good. Let's go redo this together, or you go redo it, whatever. And so A players just want to escalate away or accelerate away from the pack. B players frequently say, look, I'm a worker B, and I know I'm not an A player, and that's okay. I am just going to grind out good code, art, sound, whatever. But some of them are fearful and say, well, if I have too many B players around it, let alone A players, I will look terrible. It will be very obvious that I'm just not that good. There are people here who are a lot better than me. So the way to fix this is for me to become a manager and for me to hire a bunch of people who aren't very good at all, like, much worse than me, and then I'll look like the tallest mushroom, and that'll be great. And so that is the. The real danger of V players. Like, having people who are perfectly willing to do good work day in and day out is not the worst thing in the world. There's plenty of things that A players will turn their nose from because it's just not that challenging. It's not accelerating them out of the APAC, and Bs are very, very good for that. And a lot of B players over time grind their way to being A players. So you're investing in their future and they know it. So that's also positive. But B players who have fear of being found out are the ones that you have to watch out for.