The reading list behind this page

Every principle on our careers page traces back to one of these episodes. Consider it recommended listening before you apply: an applicant who turns up having done it is making our point for us.

Episode	Subject	What we took from it
#90, #329	Charlie Munger	Unreliability outweighs every virtue; go to bed a little wiser
#88, #202	Warren Buffett	Brains, passion and integrity over résumés; bad news first
#306, #189	David Ogilvy	Hire above yourself; the feedback formula; pay peanuts, get monkeys
#36	Nolan Bushnell	Hire for full-blast intensity; ask what people read
#248, #368	John D. Rockefeller	Six weeks of rejection; the drop of solder; test hard then trust completely
#270	Vannevar Bush	Interview on a real problem; hard job, no interference, full backing
#282, #71	Jeff Bezos	The three hiring questions; missionaries over mercenaries; the handstand
#29	The HP Way	The medal for defiance: overturn decisions with customer evidence
#365	Nick Sleep / Jim Sinegal	Refusing the markup nobody would have noticed
#390, #398	Steve Jobs	The carpenter's back panel; “challenge me”; a team of missionaries
#381	Michael Ovitz	Reading every file at seven in the morning when nobody else did
#117	Chung Ju-yung	Sweeping the entrance of a shop he only delivered rice to
#7	Ray Kroc	Hire someone, then get out of their way; persistence over talent
#330	Les Schwab	Half the store's profit: how you make people act like owners
#212	Michael Jordan	Coachability as the top attribute; identical effort in an empty arena
#275	Paul Graham	Determination beats intelligence; what feels like play to you
#317	Ed Catmull	The team beats the idea; protecting people from their own drive
#322	Herb Kelleher	Converting missionaries, not hiring employees
#153	Bill Bowerman	The gifted-but-casual are beyond help; no pep talks
#195	Sid Meier	Prove the idea by building it, then judging it honestly
#417	Arnold Schwarzenegger	Asking the winner what he did differently
#48	Richard Branson	Are you too important to take notes?
#198	The Rothschilds	Apprenticeship over prolonged schooling
#61	Malcom McLean	Six months driving trucks before you touch a customer proposal
#96	James J. Hill	Scouting the line himself rather than reading reports
#20	Danny Meyer	What you study outside any curriculum is what separates you
#32	Jack Ma	Rejection as a starting point rather than a verdict
#66	Henry J. Kaiser	Problems are just work clothes; start before the job is fully defined
#77	Steve Jobs bei NeXT	Why teams say “one more month” when they mean a year
#107	Sol Price / Costco	The markup nobody would have noticed, refused anyway
#159	Andy Grove	Coming back after the rejection until it turns into a yes
#170	Claude Hopkins	A single letter can show how someone thinks
#203	Georges Doriot	Forty years of files on students: the mentoring was the product
#233	PayPal	The hire who attacked the product during his own interview
#234	Sam Walton	Do it, try it, fix it
#264	Edwin Land	Taking a correction and acting on it immediately
#300	James Dyson	Seeing twenty faults on first use and building a product from them
#311	James Cameron	Acquiring whatever skill the project needs right now
#338	Monty Moncrief	Twenty-nine dry wells before the one that mattered
#361	Estée Lauder	Obsession with the product, every day, for decades
#412	Roger Federer	Coachability at the highest level
#416	Demis Hassabis	A missionary rather than a mercenary, decades on one thing

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