“We were the first people to work on Stripe, and chronologically that’s interesting but so much of the great work that we do now, we’re a piece of it but we’re not the most important piece of it,”
This is amazing. A huge part of my job right now is too find people who make me feel this way - but it's remarkably impressive to find it put so perfectly by the founders of a company like Stripe.
As an extremely vigorous opponent of personality cults, it makes me incredibly happy to see these two embrace such an excellent philosophy.
Homo sapiens are primates, and we tend to form status hierarchies regardless of which era or environment we are in. The problem with status hierarchies is that they lend authority to a person, instead of an idea.
This is why you can see, for example, SpaceX absolutely demolishing the aerospace industry with minuscule resources compared to the incumbents. SpaceX focuses on ideas to improve aerospace technology, whereas the incumbents focus on maximizing profits for the executives and investors. They do not allow any experimentation with their product for fear of altering a working platform. This fear leads to stagnation, loss of talent, and the present decline.
For technological innovation to progress, ideas must take absolute precedence over people. Only through the rational and empirical vetting of ideas will we be able to improve the state of the art. Not through appeals to authority.
5% does seem a little high. I think Sam Altman called for a minimum of 10% (so the allocation is equal to x such that x us equal to or greater than 0.10) to go to the first ten hires. Perhaps, this would be a scenario where the first hire would get half of the allocation (so the allocation to the first employee is equal to x such that x is equal to or greater than 0.05).
However, I'd argue the first hire isn't "the least important junior assistant developer" no matter what label you put on them. Other than a first (or maybe second but that's stretching it) hire, I fail to see where someone would get five to ten percent.
My take was there were many Americans applauding their modesty and humility. Yet being from Europe (Ireland in particular) one is taught from a young age not to get a big head etc. So this comment was "This sort of humility and sharing or deflecting the praise is quite normal in Europe"
This is amazing. A huge part of my job right now is too find people who make me feel this way - but it's remarkably impressive to find it put so perfectly by the founders of a company like Stripe.