Josh Miller: preference

Transcript context

…Okay. Awesome. That was really helpful. As you also saw, I asked on Twitter what to ask you, and I got a ton of questions. People have a lot of questions for how y'all do stuff. The most common question turned out was from Ched Khan who had the most likes of all the questions that people asked you. And it was around hiring, that basically you've been able to convince some of the most amazing people in the world to join The Browser Company. Like you just mentioned, you hired the guy that built Chrome, basically, to work on Arc now. What is it that you do that convinces amazing people to join? Because everyone wants to learn from you and copy you, and do that themselves. Thank you for that question and for all the legs. I will admit, this is also a fairly awkward one to ask. I actually just came from an interview with a candidate and they asked me a fairly similar question. And I said, "You know what? You should go ask the people that work here. It's not me. I don't know why they ultimately join." But what I will tell you is, the intentionality, which is another secret, sharing a lot of secrets. This one will probably get me in trouble. I don't care about web browsers. I've never cared about web browsers. I never wanted to build a web browser. If you had told me a decade ago that I'd be working on a desktop first web browser at 32, "I'd say what in my career went horribly wrong?" The origin story of this company was Hursch, who I met when I was 20. We started a company together. Lots of mistakes, a lot of successes, a lot of growing pains and figured out who we are. And a decade later we were still friends, we went to each other's weddings. We'd worked in all these different industries and different-stage companies and we just realized, "You know what? There are a lot of ideas that get us really excited. There are a lot of shapes and sizes." But as we were nostalgic for looking back on the decade prior, it was groups of people and moments in time with those people that were our best memories. And so, what Hursch and I decided, long before the company started was, we want to build a company, but we want to build a company where we feel like we can hire whoever we want. And I don't mean whoever we want in terms of who would dare say no. But we want to work on something where the greatest minds in our industry and adjacent would want to work on that prompt in a hypothetical sense. And then build an organization, build a team where we can work in the way that, after a decade of trying on a bunch of hats and ways of doing things and metrics this and [inaudible 00:30:04], we could do what was right for us. And so, where we went to with a new web browser, let alone a web browser as a new form of computing, which is our true aspiration, to build an internet here. You can look up the internet computer YouTube video on our Browser Company YouTube page. But our ambition's even higher than a web browser. The intention of that is, we just want to go hire our favorite people that we know and don't know and build a team that, we'll never get bored working with this crew, because of how incredible they are and how humble they are. And so, when you think about it like that, I as the CEO as notionally the head of product, I view our product as our team. And I know a lot of companies say that. I actually think they probably all mean it. I don't think anyone's being disingenuous, but we really meet it. It is the genesis of this company. It is not a new web browser. It is, let's build the dream team, our dream team. And let's build a way of working that is really fun for us and really speaks to our values. the genesis of this company. It is not a new web browser. It is, let's build the dream team, our dream team. And let's build a way of working that is really fun for us and really speaks to our values. And let's go find people that resonate with that. And that trickles down to everything we do, whether it's our policy about this or the way we do that. I'll give you one example. Our goal of interviews is to convince people not to join The Browser Company. If I have an interview with someone, I don't pitch them and say, "What do you want to ask me? Anything you want? I'll be super honest, most people shouldn't want to work here." So I think it all starts with us viewing our product as the company, as the team, not Arc itself. And then, I think being self-aware, that that's how I think that's how we think. But again, flying back things that I've heard, we have been fortunate. We've hired a lot of really remarkable people, especially on paper and especially off. I mean, all around. I'll just give a couple examples to share one thing that I've heard. A few recent hires, we hired someone named Darren who, as I mentioned, he co-created the first prototype of Chrome and then ran it for 16 years. I think hundreds if not thousands of people reported to him. He joined the Browser Company as an IC. We just hired a woman named Tara. She was on the original Paper by 53 team, one of my most inspiring products at the beginning of my career. Most recently she was actually, I believe, Senior SVP of product at Vimeo and a senior director of engineering. She joined our engineering team as an IC. We just hired someone named Peter Vidani. When I was 20 building consumer social software, he was the coolest, most impressive person. He was the first designer at Tumblr. Ran the design team at Tumblr for seven years and the most recently was SVP of design at Slack. Joined the team as an IC designer. And though that sounds like I'm bragging, the thing that was really interesting and perplexing to us was, these are people that have made a lot of money, that have had really fancy titles, that have worked on transformative projects. Why are they joining this team? And I think something that people show up to The Browser Company with is, in addition to heartfelt intensity, this aspiration that their work at The Browser Company will come to define their careers. And that's coming from people that have done really remarkable things, by all accounts. And I think more than anything, we've realized that, in order for people like that to join and to show up with that, there are a number of things you have to promise and provide them, that make folks like that gravitate with the intention of doing their work of their career, ranging from an incredible and ambitious aspiration, really empowerment to act on the prompts that they're given on behalf of the team in the way that they see fit, and truly trusting and empowering them. A very kind culture. I think if you've been doing this for a decade plus, your intolerance for bullshit is very, very low. And so, by no means do I think we're perfect.…

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