AI is changing what teams look like at Instagram. If its CEO, Adam Mosseri, has his way, it won’t change his employees’ core traits.
“For the longest time, almost no matter what the function, I always look for three things,” Mosseri said during a recent episode of “Lenny’s Podcast.”
Mosseri said he wants workers who are quick learners, gritty, and “ideally very self-aware.” Self-awareness is key, the Instagram leader said, because it means “you can actually take feedback.”
“If you are those three things, if you’ve got fire in your belly, you learn quickly, and you’re self-aware, you can kind of get good at anything eventually,” he said. “But if any of those things are missing, there’s usually an issue.”
Mosseri’s focus on core traits is something that many other managers have said they want across tech at companies like Scale AI and Lovable.
“I care more about how fast someone learns and adapts than where they are today. If a conversation feels alive, if I walk away having learned something new, that’s a strong sign they’ll thrive in the team and push our ways of working forward,” Lovable CEO Anton Osika previously told Business Insider last year.
Tech, including places like Instagram, is likely to change drastically over the next decade, Mosseri said. That’s why he thinks the workers poised to thrive in a world remade by AI are likely to be the most adaptable.
“I think two things that I’m continuing to encourage myself to do are to stay curious and to put yourself out there,” he said. “I just think you’ve got to try things.”
Mosseri compared this openness to experimentation to learning a new language, especially early on, when someone is just getting a feel for the correct pronunciations.
“Are you willing to sound like an idiot?” he said. “Are you willing just to say it and be corrected and not be offended and then just get better and better? You just have to put yourself out there. And with all of these new tools and models and technologies, I think you just have to be willing to try stuff.”
Beyond the three traits, Mosseri repeatedly emphasized the importance of taste. It’s why he said that he’s bullish on the future of designers, who often have a great feel for what should be the focus.
“In a world where it’s easier to build things,” he said, “it’s more important to make sure that your time is spent figuring out what you should be building in the first place.”
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