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Palmer Luckey Only Hires People Who Build Things Nobody Asked Them To

By Palmer Luckey · Hiring · 1 min read

When Luckey hires at Anduril, he looks for people who have done projects outside of what their work paid them to do or what their school made them do — with their own money and their own time.

Key Points

Don't look to school to tell you what projects to work on — they're years or decades behind
When you work on something just for yourself, you make way better decisions
He hires people who build things on their own time because they want to bring something into the world

I look for people who have done projects outside of what their work paid them to do or what their school made them do.

Don't Wait for Permission

Luckey: The most important advice I can give people is to work on projects that you care about. Don't look to school — whether it's college or the state-mandated younger educational system — don't look to them to tell you what electronics projects you should be working on.

One — they're often years or even decades behind what industry and hobbyists are actually doing. So you're going to be learning how to do things that are ancient.

Schools are often years or even decades behind what industry and hobbyists are doing.

The Hiring Signal

Luckey: When I hire people at Anduril, I look for people who have done projects that were outside of what their work paid them to do or what their school made them do.

Because that means they're the type of person who is willing to work on things with their own money and their own time — because they want to bring something into this world that wouldn't have existed otherwise.

I look for people who build things with their own money and time — things that wouldn't exist without them.

Working for Yourself Teaches You More

Luckey: When you're working on something that you're only doing for yourself, you're going to make way better decisions in what you teach yourself and how you do things.

Those are the projects that drive you to learn the most. It's what drives you to have the right attitude around all this stuff.

When you're only doing it for yourself, you make way better decisions. That's what drives you to learn the most.