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Mark Zuckerberg: "I'd rather hire someone with raw intelligence and no experience than a 10-year veteran" "The two most important things I look for, number one is just raw intelligence." Zuckerberg explains why: "You can hire someone who is a software engineer and has been doing it for 10... show more
402,132 views • 4 months ago •via X (Twitter)
35 Comments

It sounds good on paper but looking at the type of people Zuckerberg has actually hired and the low quality of the products they’ve delivered, it’s difficult to really say he’s a good judge of talent.

Mark has delivered nothing but failure for years. His initial offerings were never that innovative or technically demanding. Why are his thoughts on this matter relevant at all unless presented as a cautionary tale?

Didn’t Meta shell out hunters of millions to hire the people with the most LLM experience to build his latest LLM? Because the initial group - presumably all very smart - failed to do that?

this advice works if you're meta and can afford to burn through 50 raw-intelligence hires to find the 3 who actually ship. it's survivorship bias from the hiring seat. the electrical engineer who built photos is the one zuckerberg remembers. the other raw-intelligence hires who flamed out in 6 months don't make the podcast. also "raw intelligence over experience" is easy to say when your codebase has 10,000 senior engineers maintaining the infrastructure that lets the brilliant new hire move fast. that safety net is invisible to the person giving the advice. take the same raw-intelligence hire and drop them into a 5 person startup with no guardrails and the calculus flips completely.

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…but you need to keep an eye on these raw intelligence hires so they don’t turn into the next SBF. I like to hire a mix of raw intelligence no-nothings and the 10+ year veterans. Makes for a strong team.

Ich setze auf Minimalismus im Hiring. Effizienz braucht weniger eingefahrene Routine und mehr kognitive Agilität. Intelligenz schlägt den perfekten Lebenslauf.

The Photos builder example is perfect - willing to do whatever it takes > specialized credential. The AI parallel is slightly obvious: a 22-year-old who's genuinely curious and wires up agents quickly will outcompete someone with 10 years of legacy CRUD experience who's still skeptical of copilots. Raw intelligence + alignment with mission has always been the actual formula. Zuckerberg just says the quiet part loud.

Raw intelligence also tends to be cheaper and less likely to question your last 10 bad ideas.

The more various skills in different industries you have the better. Career people are deprecated. Too narrow

Rationalist arrogance. Imagine hiring someone as a 'doctor' based on your delusional conception of 'intelligence', instead of actual credentials. You wouldn't last very long, and wouldn't deserve to.

the tradeoff is real tho, you get adaptability but lose institutional knowledge. best teams probably need both types tbh

Agree, when people tell me, they've been doing it for a long time when challenged, I'm like well, doesn't mean you are any good at it

Raw intelligence indeed matters when you are building a fast-growing startup. You win through speed, pain tolerance, and obsession. But for most people who work in stable environments, experience is still key.

This is solid advice from Zuck. Smart, hungry people learn crazy fast and don't carry old baggage. I've worked with both types and the sharp newcomers often end up running circles around the "10 years exp" folks who just repeat the same stuff. Hiring for potential over pedigree makes sense if you can actually train them.

This is what all these big companies are doing with their leetcode tests and other assignments Legal iq tests but they can’t be blunt and test for iq or say it is one due to reasons They’re all filtering for the natural intelligent one and teaching them after they hire

Raw knowledge, intelligence, and a lot of desire to work.

@TheConquerMM I will put "raw intelligence" on my resume and see how quickly their AI Hr bot rejects me.

Also notice the False Choice of this statement: Experience (aka: footdragger w/ no intelligence) OR Raw Intelligence “An ounce of history, is worth a pound of logic. - Oliver Wendell Holmes

Raw intelligence isn’t rare. Relentless learners are. 10 years of experience often means 1 year repeated 10 times. Zuck isn’t betting on IQ. He’s betting on slope.

Except people are not that reliable; smart, dumb or in between. This is more divisive language based upon Zuck's "can PROBABLY adapt". Adaptability is not an age quality; it is a quality.

"Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change." – Stephen Hawking

honestly, raw intelligence can beat experience sometimes...

what do they get dumber as they work longer?

Id hire my gf and I together cuz we like hate eachother and we're different types of smart , but we're both locked in coffee advil trade work addiction , imagine if we weren't and focus on something else idk it be weird she hates computer then she does whatever I do but is nuts

日本では新卒採用ってのが多いです。 純粋培養ですね。

Well, he's not overtly wrong.

It’s about work ethic not necessarily the person with the most experience

basically takes advantage of people and uses them

Experience is the sum of things you know; intelligence is the ability to learn. In 2026, learning to unlearn is better than 10 years of experience.

About Meta layoffs. They spent many years at Meta. Did their raw intelligence decline ?

Building is different from ensuring. Ensuring has always been the labour market where wages get crazy. He hires veterans for that.

@SupplyChainBlog I cannot believe that such a big organization has a policy of one-size-fits-all profile for staffing. There must be some experienced programmers somewhere in Meta. And some other professionals too.

@Abhishekcur Cool story. You don’t want to hire programmers but you make everyone to sit through four hours of mind-numbing leetcode. Two electrical engineers with no experience passed the interviews? I totally buy that

one of the overhyped ceo with zero talent and only luck..
