I used to work at an early-ish stage startup, witnessed about 10-15 people getting hired, maybe 30-50 people who didn’t, and I would be very hesitant to give this advice in this form. It’s... not very rigorous thinking, there are so many ways it could be wrong https://twitter.com/asmith/status/1342617858707079168

don’t mean to single out Adam for this, I’ve noticed this is a broader pattern with ppl talking about startups: why does this have to be framed as advice? Why not simply make the observation “10 ppl we talked to who also interviewed at BigCo all chose BigCo”?

Also how do you know that people rejecting your offer is a net negative to your recruitment process?

If you treat potential hires well, and they sense your co is great, they’ll refer friends to you even if they don’t end up working for you right away

I have, I suppose the difference is that I play a longer game. I’m willing to invest hundreds of hours to find a handful of exceptional people. Communicating this clearly means that I effectively recruit people to recruit other people for me without any $ payment necessary https://twitter.com/henryinnis/status/1342740725935427585

In fact tbh on retrospect I wish I spent more time recruiting