Thread by @XavierHelgesen

Smart young generalists VS experienced specialists. I have hired literally hundreds of both. Either can cause huge problems in the wrong situation and change your business in the right one. Short thread 1/

Smart young generalists are almost always terrible managers. They have no experience managing people. The smarter they are, the less patience they have for the boring, sometimes tedious aspects of good management.

Experienced specialists are often used to high pay, a big budget, and a team around them. Take any of those away and they fall on their face because they haven’t made a spreadsheet themselves in 15 years.

The flip side: Smart young generalists are super tech savvy, will work 80-100 hours a week, are sponges for knowledge, and will bring lots of great ideas to the table.

Experienced specialists will have deep industry networks, know exactly what to do and who to call, and have a deep mental repository of what works and what doesn’t.

Don’t think that an experienced VP of Sales can solve your sales problem. If you can’t sell your product, how could someone who didn’t build it? What they can do is scale and institutionalize a sales process.

Don’t think a VP of HR can solve a toxic culture. Toxic culture always and everywhere comes from the top. You need to change the leadership (or change your mindset if you are the leader) if you want a great culture.

Hire smart young generalists when what matters is volume of ideas, volume of work, and modernization of systems/marketing.

Hire an experienced specialist when you need to do what someone had already done. If you need an app that scales and doesn’t crash: pay for the experience of someone who has done that before and can prove it.

If you need to manage a group of people and produce high output from a happy team... hire someone whose former employees love them and whose former bosses do too. These are rare, but they are out there.

Also, don’t overhire. Your $1 million revenue Saas company doesn’t need a $100 million CFO even if it has huge growth aspirations. Hire for the experience of growing the business you are today to the business you want to be in 12-24 months (realistically) - not longer.