Hiring for the studio

Every startup we admire has a moment, usually around sixty people, where they stop hiring on "will they be great?" and start hiring on "did the req get filled?". We do not want that moment. So we do something uncomfortable: we only open a role when the work is already waiting.

What that looks like

• No "always hiring" pages. If there is no req, there is no role.
• Every req has a named hiring manager and a named reason it exists.
• Every candidate gets the same six-stage process, in the same order.
• We write a closing memo on every search, whether we hire or not, so the next search starts informed.

We are small. We will stay small for a while. The compounding case is made by the people who are already here, not by the ones we will hire next quarter.