Required Enrollment

Last week, I was drafting an application form for &U. Required questions made it hard to click through each section, so I turned them off. I realized none of my fields need red stars.

Click to the end, why should I block you?

I only want to work with people who are bought in, who go above and beyond, who care enough to read every word and fill each blank thoroughly. You can do it in whatever order you want. Not because I made you, but because you want to.

Extra hurdles are redundant. If someone submits a form that's half empty, it's unlikely I'll accept them. If someone spams form submissions, I'll put restrictions on it later as needed.

A friend at OpenAI told me they only hire Staff engineers. This allows the company to remove a bunch of guardrails that slow down other companies with junior or mid-level contributors who require extra supervision procedures.

Outsiders misunderstand the work culture at exceptional companies. The word inhumane is often thrown around, when in fact it might be the opposite at Elon's organizations, Scale AI, Amazon, or Coinbase...

Providing people the opportunity to engage in type-3 fun, when they want to and it aligns with their mission, is the most human thing we can do. There's a scarcity of environments (and neurotransmitters) pushing us to be our best selves every day.

It's the same concept behind Alpha School: kids should be excited to go to school and take on challenging projects at the edge of their comfort zone. How else can we learn to identify north stars? But this is so much easier said than done...

Despite good intentions, most schools today exist as compliance factories, a modern horror on the scale of factory farming. I remember treating my public elementary as an annoyance which thankfully didn't care too much if I was reading Harry Potter under my desk the entire day in 3rd grade, as long as I aced the tests.

It doesn't have to be this way, in systems both large and small. There is a trust-centered approach available to us, living with no fine print. We can debate more about raising the ceiling or the floor, and the difficult tradeoffs required.

But starting with my little google form, I'm allowing people to opt in.