stop telling me you're good
Rocky went to a Tony Robbins seminar in 2024.
It's a 3 day event where you listen to him preach mindset, gratitude, and eating healthy.
Lunchtime rolls around.
Rocky heads to the venue cafeteria because gains.
Guess what they were serving?
Hot dogs and pretzels.
“The fuck?”
He just spent hours screaming at everyone to eat healthy and this is lunch?
Which brings us to a universal truth:
people's actions almost never match their words
A therapist tells you to meditate but never meditates.
Parents scream at their kids for swearing or jerking off, then do exactly that.
A programmer will write an essay on how brilliant they are.
People are very good at telling you what you want to hear. Especially when they want something from you.
If you listen to what they say, you are going to hire idiots.
There's only 1 thing you need to look at:
actions
I love the scene from Matrix when Neo learned Kung Fu.
He looks at Morpheus and says: “I know kung-fu.”
Morpheus doesn't ask where he studied or to explain it.
He just says two powerful words:
This is what we call:
the ‘show me’ test
The test is simple:
Ignore 100% of the words coming out of someone's mouth and look strictly at their output.
You say you're a competent programmer? Show me.
You say you're an amazing technical artist? Show me.
Don't tell me what you can do, show me.
I've noticed 99% of applicants fail this test.
But the few who pass, we'll hire them. This plays a big part in a game's success.
But getting good people is only 50% of the equation.
The best team in the world is useless if they spend six months doing something that should take six weeks.
That's where Parkinson's Law comes in.