There are 2 types of Twitter famous.

  • People know you for your work.
  • People know you as some Twitter character.

Okay, before I start, a small confession: I did not actually go to the YC Startup School thing. I left Bengaluru in December. I am not even sure if the event was held in Bengaluru. But assume it was.

So why did I ragebait?

I had deactivated my Twitter account. A man can only write 1,000 posts on product and strategy before he decides to chase other things in life. The VC startup treadmill being one of them.

But because I deactivated my account, my reach is now at 0. I tweet to like 10 people. So I needed to warm up the account.

Hence the shitpost before my actual hiring post, where I needed distribution.

Anyway, coming back.

There are 2 types of Twitter famous.

I read Will Manidis’ Against Cynicism. It was directly addressed to another SF Twitter account that dunks on people every day. Let’s call him Milo. If you scroll Milo’s profile, you mostly see him complaining about how the world is unfair, how everyone is a scammer, how everything is broken. It gets tiring after the first 10 tweets.

Now, being Milo is not bad. A lot of people will cheer you on. Any dunk on a person above you in the status hierarchy will get you likes.

But it is soul-crushing in the long term. People may like your salty tweets, but good people will not want to work with you.

A few years back, when I decided to meme more, I posted some absolute bangers. I grew my account from around 3k followers to 30k through a mix of being type 1 and type 2 famous. Type 2 mostly came from Figma and a bit of humour.

Even then, I felt my ratio of sarcastic posts to value was too high. As someone who wanted to work in leadership roles, I was not sure I would even hire myself.

After a while, you get bored too. How many times will you meme on a popular person? How many times will you jump on the hot topic? So I stopped.

I am not a saint. I still dunk occasionally. I still lash out from time to time. But I felt much better when I started indexing again on type 1 fame instead of type 2.

Why am I sharing this?

A lot of people DM me on Twitter. Many of them are type 2 famous. And I almost never want to work with them.

One of my tests for hiring is the same online and offline: if I meet you, do I come away with more energy or less? If I scroll your Twitter, do I feel more optimistic and energized, or do I feel like you will bring that same negative energy into the workplace?

We are being judged constantly, whether we like it or not.

It is the same reason I used to get very upset earlier in my career when HR people questioned why I changed jobs every year. Later I understood it. Hiring is a long-term decision. It costs money and time. You do not want to keep hiring for the same role again and again. So people optimize for the kind of person who sticks through.

Most companies are hard. Early startups especially. You do not want people who get bored fast or bail at the first difficult moment.

Yes, every point has a counterpoint. Some smartass will say there is no loyalty in tech, just do what is best for you at the moment.

But Twitter, like career, is a game theory problem.

In the short term, everyone optimizes for themselves. In the long term, they realize this is not a one-time payoff game. Life is long. Career is long. In iterative games, it makes sense to optimize for the long term. Being against cynicism is part of that.

This is also why managers who join a new company often bring their best people with them. Your favourite people from Twitter will end up collaborating on projects. People will hire type 1 from Twitter much more readily than type 2.

And if you really want to be type 2, it is better to be Roon or TBPN than Milo.