For those who couldn't read the original tweet mentioned in the article:
```
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.
I read through the whole article and forgot about that sentence, which did come off as pretty off field. Not sure where Marxism came from.
But idk, I thought the article was reasonable enough in calling for prestige-agnostic measures. Not like the measures in the article will guarantee the flawless hiring loop, but what was off kilter about the rest?
After spending a decent amount on Sensibo equipment and finding its accuracy is laughably bad, I did a heap of research into PurpleAir and the other sensors on the market. I already had a couple of Aranet4 devices and wanted the same high level of accuracy they provided - and so it was really down to PurpleAir or AirGradient given the SenseAir and Planter sensors. I'd say clinched my decision - and I dropped quite a bit of money on 2 outdoors and 4 indoors, split between me and a friend.
Why didn't I do with PurpleAir?
- The order above with AirGradient was about USD$800 (for kit form devices, excluding freight). PurpleAir for the same models is USD$1774.
- PurpleAir seemed to require a Google login to put the devices on a map, and I don't like the big-vendor-lock-in.
- Browsing the AirGradient forums, Achim (the founder) is really involved, and the open-source nature of the platform appealed.
For a (what appears to me to be, anyway!) small organisation, the quality and deliverable of the AirGradient system is exceptional. The equipment looks professional, joining it to the AirGradient dashboard is surprisingly easy, and the dashboard itself is really slick. It's fast, it works as direct icon on my iPhone, and does it's job (giving me key info) really well.
In saying all that, I'd better clarify I'm getting nothing out of this glowing review! I just love it when tech works well, as it should, and when it does it should be recognised and supported.
``` 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 ```