The talk raised interesting points about hiring. Jan said that most of the early hires were people from their own networks that currently were "unemployed" or goofing around and that's why it was easy to hire them. So it sounds that they hired people that they knew and trusted but who, for an outsider, would look like were not great at execution. And yet, Whatsapp is clearly a startup that excelled especially at the…
(without reading the article/listening to the talk) I suspect "unemployed" meant something like "worked at yahoo for double digit years, cashed out shares, and so don't have to take dumb jobs for eating money, so free to tackle new challenges" not "so bad at programming they couldn't find a job in a hot market"
Yes, I understood that, I tried to indicate that by writing "unemployed" - i.e. they were talented but taking it easy by their own choice (one guy apparently for 10 years). However, for a person who hadn't worked with these guys, it wouldn't be obvious that they would efficient in the execution, as many times people err to use a filled/gapless CV as a proxy for execution capability.