Since day one, “take the long view” has been one of our most important operating principles at Duolingo (and my personal favorite). It’s our secret to hiring great people.
When we take the long view, we don’t just focus on tomorrow. We look ahead to what will be good for us ten years from now. We don’t make compromises for short-term gains that may hurt us over the long term.
Because we take this mindset with hiring, we’ve managed a very low turnover rate across the company since our founding.
Here’s what it looks like in practice:
1. When we hire, we try to fill the current role and we look ahead to future roles. We ask, is this candidate a good fit for both the role we have open and the role we envision for them in four years? Hiring for the long term means thinking about their career trajectory within our organization.
2. It also means we hire more generalists than specialists. If you hire someone to fulfill a very specific need, and that need goes away, there’s no role left for them. If you hire someone extremely smart whose skills apply to a range of different problems, they can grow along with the company.
For example, even as we have expanded to new subjects, we haven’t made a single hire in engineering or design specifically for math or music. Our people were ready to shift to the new requirements for these new courses.
3. If you took the short view, you’d never hire new grads. It often takes them a year to ramp up, so you’re basically paying for their onboarding. But they make amazing and loyal employees. We often say a new grad with a year of experience at Duolingo is better than most senior software engineers at any other company.
4. We look for missionaries over mercenaries. The long view means hiring those who believe in your mission—even if it means passing over very talented people who want to sell their skills to whoever will pay the most.
When you think long term, it means you’re investing in your people. And when you believe in them, they’ll believe in you.
All that said, we’re hiring now. Check out our open roles: https://lnkd.in/ekeD8Jxt