Hire Someone Better

But, but, but what about my ego?

Really, we’re still worrying about your ego?

Look, if you really want to make sure that for the rest of eternity, in your world, you are and always will be the Top Dog then please continue to do the following;

• Ask the most edge case questions in an interview that no one would ever know just so you can feel smarter.
• Filter out people who give you that pang in your stomach because you now know, you would need to step up your game.
• Instead of focussing on what you are good at, focus on learning a lot of everything about a lot of some things with the hope that you can come close to being considered at the same level as the person you are interviewing.
• Make up an excuse for not hiring them – “they smelled bad”, “couldn’t understand what they were saying” – when you know the real reason is because they could school you with their eyes closed.

Go ahead and keep doing that and welcome the culture of YOU.  The culture where no one can exceed you and no one will ever try.

But if you want to change your culture, you want to be pushed by being around smarter or stronger people, want to wake up in the morning trying to figure out how you are going to impress someone, want to engage in tete a tete conversations that are built on respect and not the need to win… then hire the girl who is way smarter than you, a better leader then you, a more organized coder then you might ever be.

And learn, learn all that they are and do, because in the end it will not always make you better, but your team and organization that much better then you could have ever done with a bunch of people looking up to you going – “What now?”.