Conversation

I. Allen Ginsberg’s famous poem on Moloch:What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination? Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and u…

9) Otherwise--if you're not careful--your company slowly decays into Moloch before your own eyes. (slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/med) ---- They broke their backs lifting Moloch to Heaven! Pavements, trees, radios, tons! lifting the city to Heaven which exists and is everywhere about us!

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Meditations On Moloch

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10) And so, when we hit around 250 people, we slowed down hiring. Not because of money--we were, and still are, strongly profitable--but because we wanted to make sure we could actually integrate everyone we hired into FTX's working culture.

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11) We have 10% as many employees as others, but when it comes to output, I would take on any of them. We built FTX, originally, with two developers. Having 25 today allows us to scale. Never underestimate what each developer can get done in the right environment.

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12) And because we hired carefully, we can keep growing regardless of market conditions. Because we exponentially scaled our revenue and productivity, not our expenses. But more importantly, because each person we add takes on a huge opportunity, and a huge responsibility.

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13) A lot of reporters have reached out asking if we're going to be scaling back. And our answer is the same as always: We're going to keep pushing forward.

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14) More will be joining than leaving, though--as always--we'll make sure to add people at a sustainable rate. And, as always, we'll make sure to uphold a high standard.

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15) The amount each teammate can do is enormous. And while we expect a lot of each other, it's incumbent on us to create an environment where people can thrive.

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16) The first truth of the 10x engineer is that they're just a smokescreen for their 100x counterparts. The second truth is that they aren't usually born that way. Some of our devs who were rejected by another employer now produce more than that company's whole team.

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17) Which is a lesson that I learned the hard way, when I grew a company from 5 people to 10 to 25 to 10, all in the matter of a few months.

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