Biz Stone shares what Twitter taught him about hiring and firing. Don't hire brilliant jerks. Fire toxic people fast. When vetting candidates, back-channel hard and listen for red flags in vague praise.
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Do you feel like you're better at starting companies now that you've had the Twitter experience?
Well, yeah, in some capacities, yes, because I've made— I've done the wrong thing so many times that now I know which things not to do anymore. I wouldn't say I know all the right things to do. No, the things I shouldn't do again.
What are, what are like—
Because it took me like 3 times.
The top wrong things.
Um, some of them are really obvious and you still make the mistake. Um, like hiring someone because they're really good at a particular thing, maybe they're the best in the world at that particular thing, except they're a total jerk. And you hear yourself talking with the rest of your team like, well, we can hire this guy, but we Yeah, like you can separate him from everybody else. And then when you hire that guy, he's terrible and offends everybody and everybody's upset and nobody's working at their best and they don't want to come to work. So you just should not hire him. Just find the second best person, you know? That's a good one. Don't hire that guy. Or if you do, fire him right away. Don't— if you make the mistake of firing somebody that turns out to be But just keep morale because you are afraid to fire someone. You just got to fire. I'm conflict-averse. I don't like firing people.
He's a nice guy.
Yeah. And so I really don't like it. So what I do is, I mean, I just encourage any tricks that help. So when I have to fire somebody, I usually write a script the night before. And I even have notes with me when I have to fire somebody, so I have like— because everything will go out of my mind. I'll get nervous and I won't, you know. But I'm— this is the end. They're not going to talk me out of it. It's been decided, you know. So I have to just like stick to my notes, stick to my script. And that helps me fire people. But I, yeah, so I'm kind of good at firing people because—
But you need to because if you— what happens if you keep that person around? You lose traction, you lose morale.
Well, if they've done something egregious, horrible, then you just have to fire them. If they're borderline, like, they're like okay at their job, maybe you can keep them around if you can, if they're willing to be trained. That's why I feel like good— You know, good personality, good team member, like not that great but willing to be trained, that's good. Um, but if it's a— if it's like a toxic personality and it's bringing everybody else down, then you gotta let them go. Um, there's, there's— I've— there's been a lot of really smart people, and, um, you're really dependent on their knowledge of the system. But you still have to fire them, even if it means bad stuff like that.
Not meeting a deadline, or yeah. So, with that in mind, how do you hire?
So, now what we do is we always back-channel people. We ask them. Here's one trick to hiring, too, which is pretty good. What you can do is you can ask a good— person for good— for the references. They'll always give you, like, the best people for references, and then you can hire those people too, or instead. So watch out for that. And then— but there's also— we now— now that I'm much more connected, there's always somebody who knows somebody who used to work with that person, and we can go around and get the real The real deal on that person, like oh God. I did a I did a back channel on somebody, and we were thinking of hiring her, and I went to somebody who was their coworker, and I asked about her, and all that this person wrote back was. Stay away and trust me. And I really, I trust that person, so I was like, ooh, that's bad. Let's not do that.
Do you ever have to sort of read between the lines though? Like if somebody says, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, no, he was, he did his job. Then you're like, I don't know, they're really trying really hard not to tell me the negative thing.
There was one time at Twitter where we were very small still, and somebody came in, interviewed for the job. They were strong technically, and we were regrouping after to talk about the person. And everyone was like, yeah, he knew his stuff, yep, pretty good. And I let a few people go, and they were all kind of like, I don't know, like a weak thumbs up or a medium thumbs up. And then when it came to me, I said, can anyone else easily picture this guy wearing full rain gear, chainsaw on his body? And everyone was like, oh yeah, totally. And I was like, why are you guys thumbs-upping this guy? Didn't you get a crazy psycho vibe from this guy? And they're like, oh yeah, big time. Like major psycho vibes. And I was like, you should say that next time. You shouldn't just give a thumbs-up.
You should just be like, ehhhhhh.
And then all of a sudden everyone started saying all of the things that were red flags to them and everything, so we didn't hire that person, but—
