Always hire people who are smarter than you are. Always take a chance on better, even if it seems like a potential threat
-- Ed Catmull, Pixar
If we weren’t still hiring great people and pushing ahead at full speed, it would be easy to fall behind and become a mediocre company
-- Bill Gates
I will only hire someone to work directly for me if I would work for that person
— Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona
The only way for businesses to consistently succeed is to attract the best smart creatives and create an environment where they can thrive at scale
-- How Google Works by Eric Schmidt & Jonathan Rosenberg, The rules for success in the Internet Century
If you always hire people who are smaller than you are, we shall become a company of dwarfs. If, on the other hand, you always hire people who are bigger than you are, we shall become a company of giants
— David Ogilvy, founder of Ogilvy & Mather
The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it
— Theodore Roosevelt, 26th president of the United States
Steve Jobs has a saying that A players hire A players; B players hire C players; and C players hire D players. It doesn't take long to get to Z players. This trickle-down effect causes bozo explosions in companies
― Guy Kawasaki
It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do
-- Steve Jobs
A small team of A+ players can run circles around a giant team of B and C players -- Steve Jobs explained by Ray Dalio
The Greatest people are self-managed, they don't need to be managed
-- Steve Jobs
It’s all about finding and hiring people smarter than you. Getting them to join your business. And giving them good work. Then getting out of their way. And trusting them. You have to get out of the way so YOU can focus on the bigger vision. That’s important. And here’s the main thing….you must make them see their work as a MISSION
-- Richard Branson interview
Surround yourself with people who are smarter than you
-- Russell Simmons
Never be the brightest person in the room because you won’t learn anything
-- attributed to James Watson, Holly Hunter, James L. Brooks, Steven R. Craig, Michael Dell
In the realm of being the smartest person, I have this theory that if you’re the smartest person in your work group, then it might be time to consider changing jobs.
-- Secrets of the Rock Star Programmers by Ed Burns 2008
High energy, High intelligence, High integrity (internal moral code, not necessarily nice)
-- Buffet's rule for hiring
It's hard for me to comment definitively on "standard practice", as I have never worked for another aerospace company. However, based on stories I've heard, some of them sound like a Dilbert cartoon in real life. My approach is simply to seek out very talented people, ensure that the environment at SpaceX is as motivating & enjoyable as possible and establish clear & measurable objectives.
I think it is a mistake to hire huge numbers of people to get a complicated job done. Numbers will never compensate for talent in getting the right answer (two people who don't know something are no better than one), will tend to slow down progress and will make the task incredibly expensive. Also, a lot of aerospace senior managers seem to be really disassociated from and unable to do hard core engineering. I think that is a mistake and results in cloudy judgment on important technical issues -- they can't tell if something is really good or not, so they just do what everyone else does, assuming it to be the safe bet.
-- Elon Musk
Never tell people how to do things .. Tell them what to do, and they will surprise you with their ingenuity
George Patton
We let our people know what we want them to accomplish. But—and it is a very big ‘but’—we do not tell them how to achieve those goals.” That is a near-perfect summary of “mission command.”
William Coyne, senior vice president of research and development at 3M