Patrick Collison

6 points · 3 appearances · 2015–2025 · changed view

“I think probably the biggest thing, aside from how we interview folks, that we did differently is just being okay taking a really long time to hire people, in that, kind of the received wisdom is work really hard to hire the best people, and you're like, "Gee, thanks, I was going to do the opposite, but now that you've said that, I'll work really hard to hire the best people." And so I guess the question is sort of to what lengths should you go and kind of what does that actually mean in practice. And in practice it means being okay waiting a really long time to hire people and having to be painfully persistent in doing so. And so it took us, let me think, took us a year — well, it took me six months to hire the first two people, so.”

6 points · 2 appearances · 2019–2020

“The kind of the story of total factor productivity growth in the US over the course of the last, call it, you know, 150 years, is one of a sort of lowish growth, and then sort of, you know, a real growth spurt over the course is the kind of the middle of 20th century. It's been a sort of much lower level since, you know, perhaps 1970 or so, a slight kind of peak around, you know, 2000, hypothesized to be because the sort of corn quote ICT revolution, and now back to, again, quite historically low levels, at least, again, if we take our, you know, window as being the last hundred fifty years. And so, I mean, that is, you know, that charge, that picture, is very consistent with one we're sort of mid-century science, you know, worked really well, we discovered a lot of amazing things, but somehow the the rate of discovery seems to be lower since then.”