Glen Evans of Slack on Recruiting for Startups

Glen Evans of Slack - Podcast Transcript

Scott Orn:

Welcome to Founders and Friends podcast with Scott Orn at Kruze Consulting, and my very special guest is Glen Evans of Slack. Welcome, Glen.

Glen Evans:

Great. Thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Scott Orn:

Yes. We’ve been friends, and fantasy football enemies for I think about 15 years. It’s been really cool to watch Glen’s career progress. He’s a super hardworking guy and I wanted to have him on. Right now, Glen is Head of Recruiting at Slack. Maybe you’d give your quick background?

Glen Evans:

Yeah, absolutely. It’s interesting. I kind of fell into recruiting; most people do. In 2001, I started. I graduated college in 2000 and got into IT consulting. I did that for about 2 years. I needed to be more of a CS major, which I wasn’t. I was a managerial economics major. So I found myself being asked to code, do test plans and test cases and a lot of Q&A work, and a lot of technical work that I really was not equipped for. I found a way to make it work. I stayed up really late every night, preparing for client sites the next day and did my best. But after a couple of years of that and the economy slowed down I realized this wasn’t really what I wanted to do. I was at a crossroads and found a job posting online for a technical recruiter at a company in San Francisco called TEKsystems. They are an agency that work with some greater companies around the Bay Area. They’re a national company but this was the San Francisco branch. I interviewed - a good group of people that hired me to be a recruiter. There was a lot of building relationships, cold calling. It was an amazing experience. I did that for 4 years. They taught me the foundations of sense of urgency, customer experience, candidate experience, negotiating - just generally being a good business person.

Scott Orn:

I remember how hard you were working at that job. That why I was saying I’m really proud of how far you’ve come and your success is totally earned, because that was a tough job. You were really working your ass off there.

Glen Evans:

Yeah, it wasn’t easy. It was mostly commission. Anybody who lives in the Bay Area knows that commission-only jobs are pretty tough to make out with. It was 4 years of sweat and tears and all those things. Then in 2007, Google was really blowing up. I had some friends from my office in the city join on contracts there. I was at a point where I was ready to make a move. I pinged them. They referred me without any hesitation, and I was able to interview. I got a 9 month contract there to support software engineering. I ended up working also on a renewable energy initiative that they were doing. So I was placing thermal engineers and mechanical engineers and things like that. So it was a wonderful experience. I went from placing temps in many cases to placing software engineers with degrees from Stanford and Harvard and Yale. The hiring bar was much different. It was my first exposure to in house recruiting. I was just so amazed that these roles existed at companies like Google. It was fantastic.

Scott Orn:

They indoctrinated you to into bid tech. But Google is super progressive in the way they hire and the Google bar is really high. I remember when I came out of business school, I emailed you about Google. You submitted my resume and Google was like, ‘You’re not qualified for an interview.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, Jeez! Thanks guys.’

Glen Evans:

Yes, they were very, very selective. The high bar anyway, was what I think led to a lot of their successes. Not that you weren’t a good candidate but I think they were very, very selective. They wouldn’t have converted me because I didn’t think they considered my college to be a top tier college etc. So I think they just were very selective.

Scott Orn:

Yeah, I think it’s part of the method. By the way, at Kruze Consulting we’re growing super fast, and I know how hard it is to hire and I know how hard it is to get. We only let awesome people to come work here or recruit awesome people because when you have someone who is not that great, it slows the whole team down. It’s a total mess.

Glen Evans:

Absolutely. It’s a drain. It’s hard to pick up the pieces. Replace that person, get them out. There’s so much damage that can be done if you aren’t keeping the bar really high and not compromising.

Scott Orn:

So you went from Google to the other big, giant, monster ad tech company.

Glen Evans:

Yahoo! Yes. That was during an interesting time. I joined shortly after Yahoo! declined a deal to be acquired by Microsoft.

Scott Orn:

I remember that.

Glen Evans:

It was a very interesting time to be there. The morale in that place was…I think people were bummed. Overall, the experience was great. People were really awesome and fun to work with. I learned a lot. It was another contract opportunity and they gave me a chance. So I worked mostly on everything from copywriters, editors to some software engineers, designers. I did internal roles like training L&D and things like that. I kept jumping around to the economy was really taking it away. We all knew the world was almost going to end.

Scott Orn:

The financial crisis.

Glen Evans:

I saw a lot of the contractors that were hired with me. Every week a few more would be let go. We were not growing. There was a hiring pause every other week. It was pretty tough to go through that. But my boss kept moving me to things that were higher. I ended up working as the executive assistant for the CEO. I kept getting put on new things because they liked the work I was doing. So that was fun to stick around. But it was disheartening to see people you started with leaving around you. So at the end of that year in December ‘08 they couldn’t keep me on, so that was a bummer. But understood. It’s part of the business of being a contractor - funding running out. Then I decided, ‘Okay, I won’t get married in 6 months. What am I going to do with myself?’ So I went back to my agency.

Scott Orn:

Oh, I didn’t know that.

Glen Evans:

Yeah. It was short lived. I went for the stability. I thought it would be a place where I could ride out the storm, with the economy being really down. Things happen in life sometimes for a reason, and you look back and ‘Okay. If I didn’t go through that experience, I wouldn’t have ended up in my next phase.’ Three months into that I realized it was a mistake. I was so happy internally that I was discouraged because I didn’t think there were a lot of opportunities out there with the economy being down. I pinged my friend who I had worked with at Google, who I knew was at a company called Facebook in 2009.

Scott Orn:

What an awesome time.

Glen Evans:

Yeah. This guy liked working with me. We didn’t work together that closely, but he was a sourcer. A sourcer is somebody who does a lot of front-end, targets passive candidates, and bring them into process and hands them off to a recruiter. So simple things. He sent me somebody. I followed up on everyone he sent me, ended up hiring a couple of them, and sent a thank you to him when we got a hire. It was like a team effort and it felt good to give him that kudos.

Scott Orn:

It sounds like you’re recreating the internal work, and instead of just being the lone gunman you have the full team.

Glen Evans:

Yeah. Recruiting is always a team effort with hiring leaders, interviewers, coordinators, sourcers - everyone you’re partnering with. So that experience with John, led me to interact with him again for Facebook. He felt comfortable referring me because he liked what I was doing at Google a few years later. So I got an interview, prepared, studied all night. I knew I wanted out of the agency again. They were making me an offer to be a contractor. This is back when the software engineering team was probably less than 10 people.

Scott Orn:

Are you kidding me? The recruiting team?

Glen Evans:

Yeah, the recruiting team.

Scott Orn:

Only 10 people for that big of a….?

Glen Evans:

Yeah. Back then we were only 650 people or so.

Scott Orn:

Wow!

Glen Evans:

I was asked to focus on infrastructure software, so kernel engineers and low level system performance folks that were dealing with keeping the site up and running and performing and things like that. So that was my focus. I had a number of wins in the first 6 months and we started seeing the growth increase. They offered me a full time opportunity to stay. Off course this was like my dream at this point. In the same vein, they asked me to run the team I was working with, which was 3 other people. So I converted to a lead role of managing a few people and running what we called infrastructure software engineering roles. So I got to partner with some really great people, built the process that put together a lot of different foundational things that the company still uses today, which is really fun to look at.

Scott Orn:

I remember on the way to a fantasy football draft, and the Oculus thing had just happened. Maybe you’d talk people through the merger, integration and then how recruiting works through that, because that was one of your big things.

Glen Evans:

Yeah, so fast forward - I think the acquisition went down in 2014. By that point, I had a team. I was supporting all of the infrastructure. I had team security, so my team had grown from 4 to probably 80 people at that point.

Scott Orn:

Awesome.

Glen Evans:

We had teams aligned and set up around everything from the data center hardware to technical project managers, software production engineering. We had a bunch of different recruiting teams aligned by key hiring pipelines. That was part of just scaling to meet the needs and numbers. The hiring numbers were increasing. The hiring bar was very high. We needed resources who were trained to have a consistent pipeline. Then things were pretty stable. We had a good management team in place. One of the things that ended up happening was we had a new boss. Oculus was acquired. The deal was closing over the summer. They needed to integrate into all of our processes and to our applicant tracking, our offers, the salary bands. Everything related to relocation, immigration - whatever. So when we acquired Oculus, they were a small company acquired for big dollars.

Scott Orn:

Yeah, it was super sexy. Oculus is a VR company that lets you see virtual reality. They had a huge kick starter. Then they raised a bunch of [inaudible 10:42] money and Facebook bought them for multiple billions of dollars. It was a very high profile acquisition.

Glen Evans:

And while I’m sure many people were excited, there were just as many people that felt that they should be their own company, and they should do things their own way. They were resistant. My process was building trust with their founders and showing them the ropes like, ‘Here’s how we do things, here’s how we present offers and here’s how we get them up and running.’ Showing them the ways of our offers, our bands, our benefits. There was a group of people that wanted to make offers to, that were inflate on hold because they had to get into the… So I jumped in, getting offers done, built a team as well in conjunction. So I ended up working with them for about 6 months and helped get them integrated into our systems and process, and then built the team. Hired a manager for the recruiting team. And then ended up handing them off to another person in recruiting to run. It was really fun to be a part of a startup with that kind of backing.

Scott Orn:

I think I want to share something as well. You and I were driving to the airport. And I remember Sheryl Sandberg sent you a personal thank you email. And you were like, ‘Hey, this is amazing.’ I think you used to talk to her all the time but that was a cool little moment and I was like, ‘Holy cow, Glen’s really kicking ass at Facebook.’

Glen Evans:

I never actually really met her or had any real face time with her. But it was around that summer, and I sent her an update about Oculus and what the progress is in integrating and what we were focused on and etc. I think it went from my boss to my boss’s boss and up to her. And she took the time to write a thank you note. So it felt good. So yeah then a couple of years later my team had grown even bigger - up to 150 people, which is crazy. Never imagined back in 2003 when I walked into my recruiting life, that I’d be doing that at some point. So it was a great experience. The time fast forwards, and then we’re having an opportunity to go to Slack to run all of the recruiting and help another company go through what I’ve already experienced and my feeling was that this is an opportunity that I can’t pass up. I’ll have an opportunity to do everything better, that I’ve already gone through and I can help them succeed.

Scott Orn:

It was a well earned opportunity at Slack because you put so much in place at Facebook. Looking back, I want to talk about Slack because we love Slack. On Facebook there was this crazy hyper growth. What are some of the things you learnt early on? Like a hundred job changes, it must have dramatically changed - you’re managing 150 people all of a sudden.

Glen Evans:

Every 6 months my job changed. You’ve got new challenges, new pressure, double the numbers to hit as a recruiting work. Biggest lessons learnt. First and foremost - learning how to ask for resources, especially on the recruiting end. That was a hard lesson to learn, because we were often time trying to build our teams 6 months too late, and we were always trying to catch up to hiring targets. There was pressure for projects, pressure to the board, pressure to get these things done before we can go public or whatever. So I think that was always a pain point. Knowing what I know now, I know I can put together a business case and go to the higher ups and try and make that happen.

Scott Orn:

Is that an ROI thing or what’s the business case? I don’t know recruiting well enough, but how do you make your case? That’s super important.

Glen Evans:

I think you’ve got to back into the numbers. There’s generally an expectation of what a recruiter at a certain level, let’s say it’s a mid to senior level recruiter - always try and build your recruiting team with some senior people. I can get into that later. But you can have a general sense of what somebody can produce every half or every quarter. So if they produce X number of hires, you have a total target for the company or your area you’re supporting. You back into it with the resources you do have. Okay, there’s this delta of how are we going to fill this extra…

Scott Orn:

We may need to hire 50 engineers this quarter, and we can’t do it.

Glen Evans:

And so you show them the math and this is what we think we can do, and you always put a little buffer in there because people need to ramp. Generally a good recruiter - and even if they are really good, they will still need some time to ramp and understand the systems, that company, the culture, how to pitch it. All of those things. So you build all of that into it. Then you make a case based on hires per resource in many ways. And go for it. It’s healthy to have a mix of a full-time and contract, depending on your situation so that it gives you flexibility. You can always back out of the contracts if things slow down.

Scott Orn:

Going back to my previous question, how did your job change? What other skill did you…? As you scaled also and you’d gone from managing. Then you said you joined the other team of 10 recruiters. You joined these on Facebook or something like that.

Glen Evans:

Oh yeah. The software engineering team was 10 people. My team was 3, not including me.

Scott Orn:

So it was 150 that you were managing?

Glen Evans:

You learn a lot the hard way. You have to have really hard conversations. Set expectations regularly. Learn how to manage people, coach them, have one-on-ones. Be willing to be really transparent with everything you can be transparent about. Take feedback. Adjust. Show them you’re adjusting. Building a bench is the quote or the clichĂŠ that you’ve heard a lot. Who’s next. Get-hit-by-the-bus plan. If you don’t show up work one day and you’re never ever coming back - who is in place to keep things running. That comes with hiring good senior people around you. Hire people better than you.

Scott Orn:

I would think just knowing your personality you would probably love the mentoring and coaching people up a little bit.

Glen Evans:

Yeah, it was fun. It’s not for everyone. A lot of people I work with [are like,] ‘I want management.’ I’m like, ‘Why?’ It’s ‘Well, I like mentoring people.’ Well, that’s a part of it. But you have to be willing to make the hard calls. Take it on the chin when it’s not going well. Give all the praise and take all the blame and those things. That mindset had to creep into my daily routine.

Scott Orn:

Accountability. Willing to take it.

Glen Evans:

Yes, absolutely. You learn to provide proactive updates and keep everyone up to speed. No surprises. I always preach to my team - this isn’t anything like my role changed over time but I tried to do everything that was put in front of me with the mindset that my reputation was on the line. Whether I was working with a candidate, a team mate, person at the front desk, hiring leader, an external vendor -whatever. You want all of them to walk away feeling really great about working with you.

Scott Orn:

That’s really good life advice.

Glen Evans:

Yes. That just helped me. Going back to my history - the work at my agency led me to a referral at Google, led me to a referral at Yahoo!, led me to a referral at Facebook, led me to a referral at Slack. That was just I’m trying to carry about the work.

Scott Orn:

It’s how it works. That’s how life works. So transitioning out of Slack you are managing a team of 150 people. How did the Slack opportunity show up? You were probably pretty darn happy about Facebook, what led you to take the Slack job?

Glen Evans:

I definitely enjoyed the people I work with. When you get to a size of the team that we were, I think you step to the side and let everyone in your team take on more and you’re like, ‘What am I going to do?’ So I think for the last couple of years it felt a lot more like maintenance. I still cared and tried hard and all those things but it wasn’t as fulfilling, and it was a little comfortable. But maybe that was okay. I always had it in me to do maybe another one of these and maybe more than one.

Scott Orn:

Just to interject. That’s how I felt at Lighthouse, and then I moved to Kruze Consulting. I could have just chilled out and had a great life, but it wasn’t like scratching the edge for me anymore. I know exactly what you’re talking about. Kruze Consulting is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. But it’s so rewarding. I’m sure Slack is like that. You probably saw that this is an opportunity.

Glen Evans:

Yup. I pop my head now and then. I talked to a number of companies over the last few years, and nothing was that compelling to go all the way to the offer stage. One of the things that really peaked my interest besides the hype I think, was the problem of creating a platform for messaging for teams that scale that’s really interesting. There is a senior engineer that I really respect and worked with at Facebook, who left and went to Slack. I remember when that was announced I was like, ‘What am I missing?’ One of my good friends works at Slack, I pinged him and said, ‘What am I missing?’ I got on the phone with him and was really exciting. I was introduced to their head of people at the time. We had a conversation and one thing led to another and I ended up having an interview with some of the key folks, and ended up with an offer. When I went in I thought maybe I’d be a manager or maybe work in as exec recruiting or something. I wasn’t expecting - I didn’t know I’d be offered the Head of Recruiting.

Scott Orn:

Let me just interject here to say you’re such a modest person. It’s actually a pleasure to do this interview because you’re like, ‘Wow! I can’t believe that happened.’ You earned it. It’s awesome to see how modest you are.

Glen Evans:

Well, thank you. Look, I don’t think recruiting is really rocket science. A lot of it is just people skills. Work hard. Be humble. Take care of people around you. It was flattering. I also knew that I wouldn’t have had that opportunity if I stayed where I was. I get to work with not only the technical teams but the business teams, the university teams - international. A lot of stuff coming that I think we’ll just be scratching the surface right now. But down the road where will I be in 3 or 4 years if I’m successful in this. So it’ll propel my career. It’s kind of a no-brainer to take the leap.

Scott Orn:

Well, it feels like Slack is also the Facebook of the enterprise. That’s how we use it. We communicate like crazy using Slack. All the plug ins and all the integrations make it like just an incredibly sticky product. I remember we tried it out for a month because we’d heard great things. And all of a sudden, the next thing you know we’re upgrading to the paid version. I was like, ‘Oh, this is going to be a really big company.’ Because I actually liked the free version, it was great. But I was like, ‘Oh my God! There’s so much more functionality we need, and of course I’m going to pay for this.’ I’m sure you’re seeing that across all the vintage, new customer things. But it feels like it’s going to be a monster company.

Glen Evans:

Yeah, I hope so. That’s one of the reasons I joined. We created space. We created an avenue for people to communicate in teams. It’s a vertical that hasn’t really existed before. Right? So now you’ve got all these big players jumping into this arena. I have people in my team and I’m seeing some like, ‘Oh my gosh! This is so scary.’ But no, it’s validating.

Scott Orn:

The big guys are coming in.

Glen Evans:

Yeah, like Microsoft for teams, and Facebook at Work. I’ve heard of others. There’s TipChat and some other really great companies that are really doing similar things. That’s fine. I saw this at Facebook when Google Plus was announced. If anything, it makes you way better.

Scott Orn:

I totally agree. The first thing the big companies do is try to replicate what you’re doing. That’s the ultimate validation. It’s cool and clichĂŠ. But that’s actually true. It’s almost impossible for them to recreate the magic and get enough attraction and get enough people on board. It takes a year for everyone to realize that that competitor is not going to work. Like one of these moments now; these other things are launching and the Google Plus thing is an awesome analogy. I would say that Facebook and Slack are taking off like crazy, even faster. Because they’ve educated the market. I think that’s what’s going to happen here. A year from now we’ll look back on this segment of Slack’s life and say, ‘Wow! That was cute when the big boys tried to replicate it.’

Glen Evans:

Well, I hope so.

Scott Orn:

That’s me saying that. Not you.

Glen Evans:

We have to be very humble about it. If anything, the mindset

should be:

We haven’t arrived. This is what I really enjoyed about this time at Facebook. It was a little bit of a wakeup call. It was already the fear that, ‘Oh it’s another MySpace.’ And then Google, the behemoth jumps in and announces this push for social. That was really scary. But the company rallied. All the leaders rallied. The employees rallied and they really focused on building a great product and it led to great things. So it feels very similar and very familiar. And yeah so I’m hoping that we can have the same mindset and get it done.

Scott Orn:

At Kruze Consulting it’s going pretty fast. I don’t know if we can make your numbers in the next quarter. But we use it like crazy. Slack is not a startup, it’s a super later stage company, but for me from a recruiting perspective it is. You’re starting up this whole thing. You’ve got to go industrial strength. And if you’ve got to hit your targets you’re going to hire a lot of people over the next couple of years. Maybe you’ll talk about the things or the initiatives that you’re working on now - things the audience can learn from.

Glen Evans:

Yeah, I think first and foremost it was a two and a half year old company when I joined. I joined in April 2016. I was very pleasantly surprised to see how much great stuff was already in place. The company had its values defined. They had their hiring bar defined. A lot of good things were already in place, so I can’t take credit for any of that. I was very impressed and happy to see that. What we’re working on now as a recruiting team is preparing for the rainy day, if you will. I stole that from our VP of engineering who uses that. A lot of the work we’re doing is rainy day work, because things are good the momentum’s good. The wind is at our back, but that won’t always be the case. You will see some bumpy press. Now we have competition. There’s always going to be those times when people will doubt us. As a recruiting team we’ll run into candidates who might opt out, or might take the safe option or they are not going to believe in Slack. A lot of what we’re building now for the team is a lot of checklists and process and consistencies, so that we’ll have a good quality that will lead to a really good candidate experience. You want everyone you interact with who is a potential candidate or even a prospect to feel like they were treated with respect and empathy and courtesy and all those things.

Scott Orn:

It’s interesting to hear you talk about checklist and process, because that’s really our bread and butter too. Startups are chaotic, and we’re serving startups. We find that he more checklist and the more processes we layer on top of our services to them that actually is way better. We keep them on the road instead of swerving off the road. It’s interesting to hear that a recruiting organization runs the same way. It makes sense to me now that I hear it. But I never would have anticipated that.

Glen Evans:

There’s certain information you have to get. Let’s prevent the back and forth. Make sure all those things are done in a similar fashion so that the quality of work is good and the hiring leaders trust us. The candidates are happy. If the candidate doesn’t get an offer they will still feel so great about us that they will refer people. There is this mindset of that we’re training the team around sourcing. Now everyone is going to always come to us. We have to respond. We have to be creative. We have to talk about the opportunity, talk about the company, get through objections. We have to talk about competition - whatever it might be. We have to prepare them for all of those things. So a lot of times we’re creating a team that’s much more equipped to handle the bad times.

Scott Orn:

I like your point about how not everyone is going to come to us always - and I’m learning as we talk here - I can see how a recruiting team can get fat and happy if they are such a high flying, sexy company like Slack where their friends love using it. Engineers who want to work in the company; they want to work in the company and they’re coming to the company because they love the product. I could see how the recruiting organization could get a little complacent. It’s interesting that you’re already thinking about that.

Glen Evans:

Yeah. The team that I’ve joined works really, really hard. They’ve dealt with a ton of [inaudible 28:22] a ton of great people. It’s been something I’ve really been proud to support and be a part of. What I want is to get us ready for when it is tougher. I think there are some great people who will be ready for it.

Scott Orn:

And that rigor also doesn’t get tougher for the next 3 or 4 years. You can keep them on the roll. That rigor is still super valuable. This is maybe how we are. That rigor allows us to scale and hire really excellent people and make them really productive very quickly, because all of our processes are set. They can learn our processes and see how we do everything.

Glen Evans:

Yeah, if you don’t have organization around the chaos, things can get out of hand as you mentioned. So it’s good to be thinking. Then that’s another thing I learned going through the experience at Facebook was how my role changed. It went from reactive to much more proactive - thinking 6 to 12 to 18 months out like, ‘Who’s my next in line? What do we have to prepare for? What might break? What process is good enough today but could be better tomorrow?’ Those kinds of things that have been super helpful. Now that I’m here I’m carrying that mindset here. I say, ‘Okay, things are good now, but let’s make them great and be ready for the what-ifs.’

Scott Orn:

You guys might have to double head count in 18 months or something like that because you’re growing so fast. There’s a lot of stuff that could happen. Are there any tools that you really like? What are some of the little ins and outs? Like we just signed up for Greenhouse. We’re trying it out.

Glen Evans:

Yeah, we’re at Greenhouse.

Scott Orn:

Do you use that? Do you like it?

Glen Evans:

Yeah, it’s good. It’s probably one of the better ATS systems I’ve used in my career. The ones that I’ve really enjoyed are the ones that are built in-house and are maintained inhouse.

Scott Orn:

Not like Facebook engineers who are bad ass.

Glen Evans:

There are very few companies like Google or…that’s an anomaly in some ways. Greenhouse overall has been just fine. It’s got everything we need.

Scott Orn:

Any other little tips or fun things that startups can - without the budget of Slack implement and use?

Glen Evans:

Yeah, there’s a number of free tools out there. Training your team how to source from the web is interesting. A lot of people have their resumes out there that you can source with Boolean Strings and things like that. Google Search or Bing, that’s free more or less. LinkedIn Recruiter seats are getting more expensive. They acquired Connectifier that’s been helpful. It basically lets you essentially find people’s info. You can get their direct email. It like Aggregator that helps you pull information from the web so you can find them. It’s also now owned by LinkedIn so it’s very useful. But if the budget’s tight you may not be able to buy a seat for every person, but having one of those or two of those is certainly helpful. But yeah I think, posting. There are a lot of niche job sites out there. A lot of interesting places to post. You can use ads on Facebook. You can target people that way. There’s lots of creative things you can do.

Scott Orn:

That’s awesome. Maybe you’ll tell people where to find you and if you have a message for all those incredible recruiters that you’re probably trying to hire yourself - tell them where to find you and what you’re looking for.

Glen Evans:

Yeah in general, LinkedIn is a great place to find me. You can look me up and reach out any time if you have questions. I’ve actually enjoyed helping companies. I’ve had friends who’ve worked at a startup who pinged me about how to scale recruiting and how to handle certain things. So I’ve enjoyed helping them and it’s like a paid forward kind of thing which is fine. I’m always open to that kind of stuff. The type of advice maybe I’d provide to a recruiter or somebody who is thinking about where you’re going

to go:

Go somewhere where you can grow and learn the most. My career accelerated when I got to build something. I can always go somewhere much later in my career and maintain something. So I got to that point which is why I moved on and started at Slack, so I could get to build again and really be challenged and learn and grow. It’s been really great. I opened in after a few years of maintaining.

Scott Orn:

Yeah, that’s incredible advice. Go somewhere you can build and you can maintain later in your career. A little more relaxed and chilled out. Well, Glen Evans from Slack, thank you so much for coming by. I really appreciate it. Awesome interview. And as I said, you’re a very, very modest man and I give you a lot of credit for that. I know how hard you worked to get here, so congratulations.

Glen Evans:

Alright. Thank you, Scott. I appreciate it.

Scott Orn:

Take care.

Glen Evans of Slack on Recruiting for Startups

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