A senior hire was instrumental in getting Snowflake's CRO promoted. Eighteen months later, that same person was found to be 'cancerous to the organization.' The CRO had to fire them and go on an 'apology tour,' a painful but necessary act of leadership to protect the company culture.
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Challenge the 'hire slow' mantra. Hiring is an intuitive guess, so act quickly. Once a person is in the organization, their performance is a known fact, not a guess. This clarity allows for faster decisions—both in removing underperformers and, crucially, in accelerating the promotion of superstars ahead of standard review cycles.
The most common failure mode for a founder-CEO isn't a lack of competence, but a crisis of confidence. This leads to hesitation on critical decisions, especially firing an underperforming executive. The excuses for delaying are merely symptoms of this confidence gap.
Duolingo lives by the mantra, "it's better to have a hole than an a-hole." The company spent 1.5 years searching for a CFO and rejected a candidate who was perfect on paper after discovering he was rude to a driver and a junior employee. This demonstrates a deep, costly commitment to protecting company culture.
Firing decisions should be a function of both incompetence and business constraint. Not all underperformers are equal priorities. Some are like a "trash can on fire in the driveway"—a problem, but not the company's main bottleneck. Focus firing efforts on roles that are the direct constraint to growth.
Focusing on "bad to great" is more effective than "good to great" when scaling. Bad behaviors and destructive norms are so corrosive that they make it impossible for excellence to take root. A leader's first job in a turnaround or scaling effort is to eliminate the bad—like dirty bathrooms or incompetent employees—before trying to implement the good.
Rituals like 'Waffle Wednesday' were not top-down mandates but organic traditions that fostered a family-like culture. This powerful culture became a self-correcting mechanism, quickly identifying and rejecting new hires who were selfish or not team players, often before management even noticed a problem.
To clarify difficult talent decisions, ask yourself: "Would I enthusiastically rehire this person for this same role today?" This binary question, used at Stripe, bypasses emotional ambiguity and provides a clear signal. A "no" doesn't mean immediate termination, but it mandates that some corrective action must be taken.
Firing someone feels adversarial until you reframe it as a win-win. The employee wants to be successful and valued; if your team isn't the right place for that, helping them move on is a service to their career, not a disservice. This mindset changes the entire dynamic.
When confronting a talented but abrasive CTO, don't just critique bad behavior. Frame the conversation around their effectiveness. Horowitz suggests saying, "You're a fantastic Director of Engineering, but not an effective CTO," because a true CTO must marshal resources across the entire company, not just manage their own team well.
When making tough personnel decisions, leaders should frame the choice not as a personal or purely business matter, but as a responsibility to the rest of the organization. Tolerating poor performance at the top jeopardizes the careers and stability of every other employee, making swift action an act of collective protection.
