Merit, Excellence, Intelligence
Wang: We rolled out this idea of Merit, Excellence, and Intelligence. The basic idea is — in every role, we're going to hire the best possible person regardless of their demographics. We're not going to do any quota-based optimization of our workforce to meet certain demographic targets.
That doesn't mean we don't care about diversity. We care about having diverse pipelines and diverse top of funnel for all of our roles. But at the end of the day, the best, most capable person for every job is going to be the one that we hire.
In every role we're going to hire the best possible person regardless of their demographics.
Why It Mattered
Wang: It was mildly controversial. But if we take a big step back — who should companies be hiring? Companies should hire the most talented people.
I operate in a very competitive industry. Scale's role is to help fuel artificial intelligence. It's very important technology. We need incredibly smart people to be able to do this. We need the best people to accomplish this.
Companies should hire the most talented people.
Codifying What Was Already True
Wang: Most people at Scale would say this was sort of implicitly true. It wasn't a departure from how many of us thought about what we do. But it was really valuable for us to codify it.
It gives everybody confidence that even if this is how we operate today — companies change over time — we're not going to change this.
It wasn't a departure from how we thought. But it was valuable to codify it so we never change.