"Palmer Luckey says he learned the hard way that relying on Silicon Valley talent can be a trap. The founder of Oculus VR and Anduril Industries recalled how, after Facebook (now Meta) acquired Oculus in 2014, his other company's hiring funnel narrowed almost exclusively to Bay Area engineers. Many, he said, were "very mercenary-minded" and more interested in résumé building than mission."
""After moving to the Bay Area, I found that I could only hire people who already were in the Bay Area," Luckey said in an interview with Lulu Cheng Meservey on her YouTube channel on Monday. "We ended up with this pretty narrow funnel of often very mercenary-minded, very, very, tech-in crowd thinker type people." That experience shaped how he built his defense-technology startup, Anduril."
After Facebook acquired Oculus in 2014, the hiring funnel narrowed to Bay Area engineers, producing many candidates focused on résumé building rather than mission. After moving to the Bay Area, he found he could only hire people already there, resulting in a narrow pool of mercenary-minded, tech-in crowd thinkers. He deliberately expanded recruiting nationwide and targeted armed forces veterans who are less inclined to live in San Francisco. That strategy changed Anduril's culture and purged careerists and lily-pad jumpers. Casting a wider net produced a workforce motivated by impact and critical work rather than Silicon Valley perks.
Read at Business Insider
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