Brett Franklin

Director of Operations @tenex_labs

[Brett Franklin @BrettFranklin_]

@ArmanHezarkhani seems like a fit

[Arman Hezarkhani @ArmanHezarkhani]

Tenex is the fastest moving company in the world.

I'll give you an example.

Last week, we made a decision to hire interns.

2 days later, our Director of Ops @BrettFranklin_ had a team of 5 interns working in our office. They even got a full onboarding program.

The time from decision to action. That is speed. For us, it was 2 days.

If you want to work in this kind of environment, reach out. We're hiring a ton at @tenex_labs

[Brett Franklin @BrettFranklin_]

@ArmanHezarkhani

[Brett Franklin @BrettFranklin_]

@JJEnglert Sounds like a perfect strategist

[Brett Franklin @BrettFranklin_]

@swill1ams UCD is life

[Brett Franklin @BrettFranklin_]

https://t.co/JiujpGiQGW

[Brett Franklin @BrettFranklin_]

The take right now is that AI is killing the entry-level job. Fewer analysts, fewer juniors, fewer interns.

@tenex_labs implements AI for the world's largest companies just opened an entry-level internship. Here's what it actually is.

Tenex is a people business. Our product is the engineers and strategists we put in front of clients, which means the highest-stakes call we make every week is who we bet on. The intern's job is to sit at the front of that call. Find the people. Read the signal. Help spot who is actually great before anyone else does.

That is not busywork. Most weeks I am the one reading the cold emails. From ex-PayPal engineers. From MBAs. From founders who want in. There are more of them than any one person can keep up with, and that is a real limit on how fast we can grow. Handing a sharp, early-career person the front line of that is not charity. It is one of the most important things we can staff.

It is also a grind. High volume of outreach, and you get told no a lot. I am not going to dress that up.

But you will build judgment that takes most people years. What separates a good engineer from a great one. How a fast-scaling company actually decides. How to use AI to do the work of a team of five, because you will have to.

So no, the entry-level job is not dead. This one just looks nothing like the version you were sold.

If that is your kind of thing, apply. Soon.

[Brett Franklin @BrettFranklin_]

@businessbarista @tenex_labs Intern szn!

[Brett Franklin @BrettFranklin_]

@beanlawler_ @GallanisAlex Brb @GallanisAlex @beanlawler_

[Brett Franklin @BrettFranklin_]

@businessbarista One of our most productive meetings in company history - now time to deliver

[Brett Franklin @BrettFranklin_]

One of my goals this year is to hire so many people out of the Big Four and MBB that one of them sends us a cease and desist.

I'm serious. If that letter shows up, it's getting framed in the office.

I left EY ten months ago to help build Tenex. A lot of us here came from firms just like it, Big Four and MBB alike. When you've worked inside one, you walk out knowing exactly who the sharp ones are. The people who do the real work and are quietly wondering if this is it.

So I've spent the last ten months reaching out to them. Started with people I worked with, then their colleagues, then anyone I remembered as genuinely good. The net is embarrassingly wide now.

And the best ones are saying yes.

Some got counteroffers. Raises, bonuses, the whole pitch. They came anyway.

More than one told me their leadership asked them to keep it quiet until their last day, so word wouldn't spread about where they were going. They'd rather lose their best people silently than let anyone see there's somewhere better to build.

We're not slowing down. We're going to keep hiring out of these firms, in volume.

Tenex, recruiting out of the biggest firms in the world. That gap is the point. The talent in there is incredible and mostly wasted.

If we hire enough of their best people that one of them finally sends a letter, we did this right.

Bring it. I've got a frame ready. And if you're inside one of those firms, my DMs are open.

[Brett Franklin @BrettFranklin_]

@businessbarista @seejayhess @dan_zakon @beanlawler_

[Brett Franklin @BrettFranklin_]

To Meta employees who want to do more than data labeling:

@tenex_labs is actively hiring FDEs in NYC

[Polymarket @Polymarket]

JUST IN: Meta’s CTO says morale is near “the worst it’s ever been” — leadership will offer increased snack budgets to lift spirits.

[Brett Franklin @BrettFranklin_]

@aymanalabdul @tenex_labs @businessbarista @ArmanHezarkhani hands down

[Brett Franklin @BrettFranklin_]

@austin_rief Cool idea

[Brett Franklin @BrettFranklin_]

@ArmanHezarkhani

[Brett Franklin @BrettFranklin_]

@businessbarista @tenex_labs 🪨

[Brett Franklin @BrettFranklin_]

@businessbarista Not many companies are more well positioned than @tenex_labs for the shift that's happening atm

[Brett Franklin @BrettFranklin_]

@businessbarista This makes me very happy

[Alex Lieberman @businessbarista]

Recruiting is painful. It's especially painful when you need to hyperscale your business.

I'm currently feeling this pain big time.

I have to hire 15 engineers in the next 37 days, while keeping talent density high.

Not sure if it will be possible, but here's my playbook for building a recruiting machine:

1) We match selling with anti-selling

Every engineer at @tenex_labs gets two spiels:

Why you should work here:
- You get paid like a salesperson (uncapped variable upside)
- You are forced to operate on the frontier of AI
- You get immense diversity in the software you build from deep ML systems to vertical-specific agents to full-stack applications

Why you shouldn't work here:
- You will work a lot (not because we care about facetime, but because there's a shit ton to do)
- You have to be willing to bet on yourself, because that's how your comp is structured
- You have to be okay working on a portfolio of projects vs. all your energy on one product

2) We identify undervalued hubs of talent

We intentionally avoid recruiting from the obvious suspects like FAANG + high-growth startups known for their engineering talent.

We focus all of our energy recruiting from underrated talent pools that match the ideal candidate (entrepreneurial, end-to-end systems experience, AI-pilled) profile.

Examples: founding engineer, failing startups, non-FAANG combined w/ side hustles, product hunt, indie hackers, claude code community

3) We optimize the interview process for return-on-time-spent

Many interview processes are unnecessarily long.

We build our process around one question: how can we know whether you're the right fit in as close to 0 minutes as possible?

This is arguably the most important step in the system to make sure we're maintaining insane recruiting velocity.

Here's our process if helpful:
1) Intake interview
2) First round interview
3) Technical take home
4) Systems design interview
5) Final round interview

4) We open-sourcing recruiting

We invite every single person on earth to recruit for us.

If you refer a candidate & they get hired + stay for 90 days, you make $5,000.

I've watched people make a living off of this arrangement.

Turning our recruiting engine into a social network is how we cover as much ground as humanly possible.

5) We put our money where our mouth is

We only have 1 executive in our business right now.

And that person ran talent acquisition at a company that was hiring 1,000 engineers per year.

If you want to build a worldclass recruiting engine, you need to be willing to pay up for worldclass recruiting talent.

6) We take an AI-native approach to recruiting

We use @juicebox_work for sourcing talent.
We use @Lovable to build a talent FAQ site.
We use @claudeai to build up a list of talent prospects across hubs like product hunt, indie hackers, etc.
We use @claudeai to help us more effectively filter tons of apps through our ATS (@ashbyhq)

P.S. if you have any questions about our recruiting strategy, reply below. happy to help.

P.P.S. if you want to be an engineer at @tenex_labs make sure to apply.

P.P.P.S if you want to refer a candidate make sure to tell them to apply and then mention you in their first round interview.