[seancorfield]

A lot of companies seem to want to hire folks who "think like me". IMO, that's a mistake: you need diversity of thought to provide new insights into problems. If you all think the same way, and one of you gets stuck, then it's likely you'll all get stuck. This seems to be a common problem in startups, IME, and perhaps an indicator of why 9 out of 10 startups fail.

[jjcob]

Hiring someone who wants detailed requirements is not a good idea when you don't have a structure in place that can provide these detailed requirements.

If you rely on people to work independently, you just can't hire someone who wants feedback everyday to see if they are still on the right track.

[t-writescode]

Depending on the level of detail, "detailed requirements" can be the bare minimum for any level of cohesive, cross-functional collaboration.

You need to have discussions to talk about things like:

  * common UX language
  * common API expectations
  * programming language choice
    (because you will not be the only person to work on it)
  * in-app / domain language choice
    (because your users need to know what a word means.)
  * library choice (because you will not be the only person to work on it)
  * storage strategy (because there may be legal requirements here)

Ignoring all that and letting all the engineers just run wild is a great way to make a very painful company to work with and cross-collaborate on.

[saagarjha]

My impression is that Kagi aims to hire people who are already aligned on most of these. Not all of them, of course, but I read the interview as an attempt to be able to go "do this" and have candidates understand what it means.

[saagarjha]

I don't disagree, but again: Kagi is Vlad's pet project; he's already rich. I think he would rather it fail than it become something that he doesn't feel aligned with.