Re:Startup advice
by jabbernotty on Monday June 03, 2013 @04:01PM
(#5815556)
What is he talking about? He isn't talking about a saying like "stubborn as a mule", is he?
He means that you should hire unbalanced workaholics, that meteoric success is more important than providing a good, sustainable life for yourself and your employees.
It's like saying "that person is a machine." They are able to sustain a high level of work output. Think of an ox tirelessly tilling a field.
Re:Startup advice
by dpritchett on Monday June 03, 2013 @04:07PM
(#5815589)
I think nowadays he says 'relentlessly resourceful' instead.
Re:Startup advice
by youngerdryas on Monday June 03, 2013 @06:11PM
(#5816399)
He is saying disregard personal hygiene deficiencies.
From http://www.paulgraham.com/start.html -
What do I mean by good people? One of the best tricks I learned during our startup was a rule for deciding who to hire. Could you describe the person as an animal? It might be hard to translate that into another language, but I think everyone in the US knows what it means. It means someone who takes their work a little too seriously; someone who does what they do so well that they pass right through professional and cross over into obsessive.
Something got lost in that one sentence synopsis. He wasn't suggesting that you dehumanize your employees by literally thinking of them as animals.