> "Except in practice, judging from the report of founder after founder, what this often turns out to mean is: hire professional fakers and let them drive the company into the ground."
To me this points to a secondary problem further down the line in hiring. Why are you getting a bunch of professional fakers?
Maybe in hiring people (including founders) tend to look at a lot of secondary indicators: where the person went to school, past companies they've worked for, etc. Instead they should be looking at primary indicators around how they have actually done or might actually do the job. That is much harder to evaluate though, which is why people fall back to secondary indicators.
To me this points to a secondary problem further down the line in hiring. Why are you getting a bunch of professional fakers?
Maybe in hiring people (including founders) tend to look at a lot of secondary indicators: where the person went to school, past companies they've worked for, etc. Instead they should be looking at primary indicators around how they have actually done or might actually do the job. That is much harder to evaluate though, which is why people fall back to secondary indicators.