Hire Outsiders, Ban the Experienced

“Its earliest hires included high school dropouts, ace chess players, and puzzle champions—often chosen because of their eccentricities and peculiarities, not in spite of them.”

“Lauri Schultheis recalled specifically hiring for inexperience. “When we were looking to hire people for fraud, we were actually trying to find people that didn’t have experience with fraud, because we didn’t want them to have preconceived notions about what they would be doing at PayPal... We wanted them to be able to pivot and think outside the box and look at things from a different perspective, instead of saying, ‘Well, you know, at such-and-such bank, this is how we did it, and that’s how we should do it here.’”