Sleeper Week on the Road

Jun 16, 2024

Another week with nothing momentous. Instead, it was just ‘more of the same’ - more rejection of globalist communists and ‘far right wing’ candidates winning elections worldwide (and by far right wing, of course the media means a normal centrist from 15 years ago), more embarrassing moments by Cadaver Joe, more double standards as Merrick Garland was held in contempt but of course the DOJ said they wouldn’t prosecute him (unlike Steve Bannon and others), and more bogus polls and propaganda proclaiming the Biden campaign is picking up momentum (“Biden closing the gap in Florida” 😂😂😂 yeah right).

Gonna keep it short this week as I’m in Miami for meetings. Based on the last 3 days of torrential rains and flooding, perhaps Miami in June is not the best spot for a business powwow but this was fellow travelers from 3 Continents, and 2 coasts trying to find semi-neutral ground.

And while hurricane-lite weather may not have been ideal, the upside is I could land a dinner reservation at Carbone that didn’t start at 4:30pm. So there’s that.

Spicy rigatoni for the win!

Here’s a brief story that deserves mention (and applause).

Alexander Wang, the CEO of Scale.ai sent this letter out to his employees and posted the same on the company’s website. This is the way.

Today we’ve formalized an important hiring policy at Scale. We hire for MEI: merit, excellence, and intelligence.

This is the email I’ve shared with our @scale_AI team.

———————————————————

MERITOCRACY AT SCALE

In the wake of our fundraise, I’ve been getting a lot of questions about talent. All of our external success—powering breakthroughs in L4 autonomy, partnering with OpenAI on RLHF going back to GPT-2, supporting the DoD and every major AI lab, and the recent $1bn financing transaction—all of it is downstream from us hiring the best people for the job. Talent is our #1 input metric.

Because of this, I spend a lot of my time on recruiting. I either personally interview every hire or sign off on every candidate packet. It’s the thing I spend the plurality of my time on, easily. But everyone can and should contribute to this effort. There are almost a thousand of us now, and it takes a lot to hire quickly while maintaining, and continuing to raise, our bar for quality.

That’s why this is the time to codify a hiring principle that I consider crucial to our success:

Scale is a meritocracy, and we must always remain one.

Hiring on merit will be a permanent policy at Scale.

It’s a big deal whenever we invite someone to join our mission, and those decisions have never been swayed by orthodoxy or virtue signaling or whatever the current thing is. I think of our guiding principle as MEI: merit, excellence, and intelligence.

That means we hire only the best person for the job, we seek out and demand excellence, and we unapologetically prefer people who are very smart.

We treat everyone as an individual. We do not unfairly stereotype, tokenize, or otherwise treat anyone as a member of a demographic group rather than as an individual.

We believe that people should be judged by the content of their character — and, as colleagues, be additionally judged by their talent, skills, and work ethic.

There is a mistaken belief that meritocracy somehow conflicts with diversity. I strongly disagree. No group has a monopoly on excellence. A hiring process based on merit will naturally yield a variety of backgrounds, perspectives, and ideas. Achieving this requires casting a wide net for talent and then objectively selecting the best, without bias in any direction. We will not pick winners and losers based on someone being the “right” or “wrong” race, gender, and so on. It should be needless to say, and yet it needs saying: doing so would be racist and sexist, not to mention illegal.

Upholding meritocracy is good for business and is the right thing to do. This approach not only results in the strongest possible team, but also ensures we’re treating our colleagues with fairness and respect.

As a result, everyone who joins Scale can be confident that they were chosen for their outstanding talent, not any other reasons.

MEI has gotten us to where we are today. And it’s the same thing that’ll get us where we’re going, as we embark on our next chapter focusing on data abundance, frontier data, and reliable measurement to accelerate the development and adoption of AI models.

Alex

Top 10 Headlines You Might Have Missed

Here's a concise roundup of major stories that might have flown under the radar this week.

We’ll begin with a laugher. 😂

10. MSNBC suggests concerns about Trump's fitness to speak publicly while Biden appears robust in his duties. https://www.msnbc.com/top-stories/latest/trump-78-birthday-age-mental-fitness-rcna157200

9. Members of Congress are reportedly seeking a pay increase. Why not? They’ve done a terrific job and there’s only so many millions you can make insider trading. https://about.bgov.com/news/congress-seeks-raise-after-15-years-what-to-know-in-washington/

8. As a resurgent right-wing tide sweeps across Europe, globalists find themselves increasingly unsettled. Across the continent, a pronounced shift is evident as citizens vehemently reject the progressive trifecta of woke ideology, aggressive climate policies, and open border advocacy. https://x.com/PeterSweden7/status/1799903035105185954

7. The Telegraph reports a rise in excess deaths potentially linked to COVID vaccines. Mainstream media finally starting to admit what anybody paying attention to the data has known since 2022. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/06/04/covid-vaccines-may-have-helped-fuel-rise-in-excess-deaths/

6. OpenAI has made a significant appointment by adding a former NSA chief to its board. Nothing gives confidence in privacy like having the former head of Big Brother’s All Seeing Eye on your Board. https://x.com/Snowden/status/1801610725229498403

5. Tesla shareholders have voted to restore Elon Musk's massive pay package previously canceled by a judge.

4. Three teenagers have been charged with a felony for damaging a pride flag with scooter skid marks.

3. The House has passed an amendment aiming to halt DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) hiring practices within the Department of Defense. https://x.com/zerohedge/status/1802091241623945318

2. Transgender swimmer Lia Thomas has been banned from competing in women's Olympic swimming, following a failed challenge to the rules. https://redstate.com/wardclark/2024/06/12/its-official-transgender-swimmer-lia-thomas-not-allowed-in-international-womens-swimming-n2175391

1. Trump has proposed a radical shift in tax policy, suggesting the elimination of income tax in favor of tariffs. https://notthebee.com/article/report-trump-told-republican-group-that-hes-considering-eliminating-income-taxes-and-replacing-them-with-tariffs

What I’m Watching and Reading….

Tom Brady with 2 minutes of brilliance.

Insightful summary video by Zach Vorhies on Leopold Aschebrenner’s new AI advancement paper which is getting a lot of traction/reading among those in the field. Some of it is fairly complex, but the TDLR is things are hurtling along faster than a rate at which anyone predicted and the consequences will be profound. Video below and here’s the thread for those that prefer to read.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1801438061366284531.html