The Best Optical Engineer at Oculus
Luckey: When I started Oculus, I thought I was really good at everything. And I was — but I was only the best at a lot of things because I had been negligent in my hiring process. For a while I was the best optical engineer in the company by far.
I realized at some point that was not something to be proud of. That was a failure. I had failed my company. I'd failed my investors by making myself a critical dependency for any of our products. The reality is — I'm actually not a very good optical engineer. I was just the best one in Oculus.
Being the best optical engineer at Oculus was not something to be proud of. It was a failure in hiring.
Make Yourself Obsolete
Luckey: Everyone wants to make themselves obsolete at the things they hate doing. People love to hire the person who handles talking to the press, managing their schedule. But nobody likes to hire the guy who's going to do the thing you like doing.
I was basically playing house. Sitting around doing things that way better people could be doing faster, more effectively. At Anduril I came in from the beginning and said — I am useless. You all need to be way better than me or we're going to be screwed.
I was playing house. At Anduril I said from day one — I am useless. You all need to be better than me.
Don't Start a Company If You Love Programming
Luckey: I tell young people this all the time. You love programming, so you want to start a software company? No you don't. Go work for somebody else who will pay you to be a programmer.
Because starting a company means making brutal hiring and firing decisions around people's performance. Dealing with government compliance. Marketing. None of that has anything to do with programming. Your job as a founder is not to do things — it's to get them done in the best way possible.
If you love programming, go work for someone else. Starting a company has nothing to do with programming.