I'd think most people would say something that seems like cronyism is an unwritten rule of what not to do. Yet that's a [big] part of Sam's legacy, no? Of course I'm assuming things about the Loopt acquisition, but it never did look right.
And the googlepleasehire.me[1][2] guy was their VP Marketing through this ordeal. So maybe google does make some good hiring decisions after all[3].
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2011/08/03/google-please-hire-matthew...
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2840233
[3] https://techcrunch.com/2011/09/07/google-fails-to-hire-the-g...
I know plenty of people who "get off the ground" by playing by the rules. I'd love for you to re-read your comment again and tell me that it doesn't sound dogmatic.
But it’s generally true. Find me a billion dollar company started by someone who follows all the rules.
What rules did companies like Atlassian not follow?
Maybe draw the restriction back a bit, there.
4. Naughtiness
Though the most successful founders are usually good people, they tend to have a piratical gleam in their eye. They're not Goody Two-Shoes type good. Morally, they care about getting the big questions right, but not about observing proprieties. That's why I'd use the word naughty rather than evil. They delight in breaking rules, but not rules that matter. This quality may be redundant though; it may be implied by imagination.
Sam Altman of Loopt is one of the most successful alumni, so we asked him what question we could put on the Y Combinator application that would help us discover more people like him. He said to ask about a time when they'd hacked something to their advantage—hacked in the sense of beating the system, not breaking into computers. It has become one of the questions we pay most attention to when judging applications.
http://www.paulgraham.com/founders.html