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Proof That Hiring Your Replacement Is The Best Way To Keep Your Job

This article is more than 9 years old.

Look, I get it. Going after the top-notch executive who made the Who’s Who on one or more of the “most influential” lists is certainly risky — especially for a startup. These executives have Google all over their resume and count editors at The New York Times among their closest friends.

Maybe this potential new hire has taken multiple companies to IPO or has many successful acquisitions under their belt. Or brings much bigger names to the table than you do as CEO. Of course, you don’t have to be the CEO to be looking to hire a highly or perhaps more-qualified person than yourself. Perhaps you are the content marketer for a tech startup and need additional help in keeping up with features in the press, and someone from Forbes or Wired applies. Maybe you’re the sales director looking for your next manager and someone higher up from Tesla or Apple applies.

Whatever your role and whoever you are looking to hire, if the best of the best applies, be honest: would you hire them?

Intimidation in the business world is often brushed under the table, rarely discussed or acknowledged. Hiring someone who intimidates you is taking a risk, but we all know risks take bravery. And bravery only comes by facing fears. I firmly believe that hiring the best in your field only makes you better – at an individual and at a company level.

I myself look for outstanding, and yes, intimidating qualities in my new hires, particularly among the board of directors. Working alongside those who could very well upend my own role if I slack isn’t an ambitious or self-serving way to broadcast bravery. It is a consistent reminder to stay on my game, to stay sharp, to build upon excellence at every level of my ability.

After all, fortune favors the bold, and those who hire for their replacement are the men and women who will soon take their idea to the next level, IPO and beyond. This isn’t a stroke of luck hiring strategy, rather it has been proven time and time again by the companies who incessantly push the business acumen envelope.

And we’d all be wise to learn a thing of two from them.

Facebook Hires Sheryl Sandberg

When Sheryl Sandberg was hired in 2008 as Chief Operating Officer of Facebook, she became number two to then 23-year-old founder Mark Zuckerberg. Fifteen years his senior with experience at the World Bank, the Treasury Department and fresh off six years at Google, Sandberg wasn’t just a smart executive hire — she was the person who could turn Facebook as profitable as it was popular.

Six years later, Sandberg is one of the world’s youngest self-made women billionaires, largely due to her 12 million Facebook shares, which have been up more than 130% in the last 12 months as of mid-Feb. 2014. With Sandberg at the co-helm, Facebook is making unprecedented strides toward user privacy and security (as prefaced at the F8 conference) and has acquired multiple social media platforms including Instagram and WhatsApp.

And it all began with Zuckerberg hiring an executive clearly his senior, who could very well oust him. Instead his company’s success has gone full throttle.

Uber Hires Everyone – Even Ashton Kutcher

Travis Kalanick, CEO of Uber, is certainly no stranger to hiring the best of the best in the tech industry. Following a significant fundraising round in 2013, the car service company pulled in key hires from Klout, Google, Facebook and Groupon. The hires filled the positions of CFO, SVP of Business, Head of Growth and Product Chief.

Kalanick himself is an experienced entrepreneur who successfully led one of his previous companies through an acquisition with Akamai Technologies for $19 million in 2007. He’s been in the startup game since 1998 when he and fellow classmates started Scour Exchange, a peer-to-peer file-exchange service. Kalanick is certainly no novice, but Uber’s quick success and rapid expansion is well-balanced by a team of folks who earned their wings at some of the most well-respected tech companies in the world.

Mashable Hires from The New York Times

Almost a decade ago, Pete Cashmore began blogging on tech culture from his home in Aberdeen, Scotland. Today, that blog is a major news site covering all things concerning the connected generation, with headquarters in New York City.

Mashable has long been a tech industry go-to digital publication, but as the editorial coverage grows on the news site, so too does the editorial talent. And just where does a renowned entrepreneur like Pete Cashmore look when he needs newsroom hires? To The New York Times, of course.

In 2013, Mashable hired Jim Roberts, a long time NYT veteran who championed the use of video and unconventional storytelling methods at the paper using new tech and social media options. Mashable, a product of the web made famous by the use of social media, uses unconventional storytelling methods often, and was one of the first to employ Snapchat as a means of content distribution.

Early this year, Mashable hired another Times employee, former senior editor of digital platforms Jonathan Ellis. Ellis fills Mashable’s role as managing editor and is expected to oversee the site’s day-to-day reporting as well as expand the site’s editorial coverage.

From a blogging platform to a news site, Cashmore’s Mashable is shedding its startup name and taking on the old guard head first.

Snapchat Hires Googlers, Amazonians and Facebookers

One of the fastest scaling anything in history (much less an app), Snapchat, in its third year, is doubling down on technology and customer experience. And not just anyone will do. The company pulled key hires from Google, Amazon and Facebook, the same folks who built the technology that helps SnapChat scale so well and keeps users addicted to the social media platform.

Evan Spiegel and Robert Murphy have made waves in the tech community for their laissez faire public relations style as well as concerns over privacy and security on the Snapchat platform. Spiegel and Murphy’s combined experience doesn’t do a highly utilized photo sharing platform like Snapchat much technological justice, if you will, but their executive team hires from three of the most renowned tech companies in the world certainly will.

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There’s a lesson to be taken from these once startups that have since turned behemoth: hire the people who could very well replace you. Expertise, experience and enthusiasm for your company or product are expected of every employee – but when looking to scale and to maximize each individual hire, look for those that will force you to maintain a measuring stick of excellence. Because when it comes to beating out the competition, overturning an industry or creating a new field all your own, those that have the potential to do your job better and see your vision more clearly aren’t who you need to be running from – they are who you need to embrace.