lsanderson | The Bozo Event Horizon -- How Companies Go Bad

The Bozo Event Horizon
Jim Waldo - July 27, 2012 @ 2:25 pm · Uncategorized

I’m on a Harvard mailing list for some folks interested in startups and innovation. A recent thread of discussion was around hiring, and in a posting to the group I talked about making sure that you did your hiring so that you avoided the bozo effect. I was asked by a number of people what I meant by that, which led to a long post that generated some interest. So I thought it might be of interest to a wider audience, as well. So I’m posting it here…

On hiring, bozos, and some (admittedly biased) history

Some time ago on this list I sent out a message concerning hiring, and mentioned that you need to avoid bozos if you want your company to survive. I said in that post
It is a truism that good people want to work with other good people; a corollary to this is that bozos attract other bozos. Once the bozo count reaches a certain percentage, the company is doomed (I saw this happen from the outside to Digital Equipment Co. and from the inside to Sun; I’mworried that Google may have hit the bozo event horizon).

A number of you asked, either privately or publicly, if I would expand on this, and perhaps talk about what happened at Sun and DEC, and what I’m seeing happening at Google (and what I mean by a bozo). These are difficult topics, some intellectually so and others emotionally so. But I’ve been thinking about this for a bit, and I’ll give it a try. Moar

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