Most of the ethical dilemmas that I have faced have all been in the category of, you know, I know something and what's my obligation to disclose it. So, for example, you see people make a mistake in the contract that you're making between the businesses and do you disclose it or do you reveal it? And generally speaking, the way that I solve these is I kind of go through a list of, you know, what's the most, what are the obligations and constituencies and in what order?
Reid HoffmanThe actual, the forming of ties with a group of people around you where they help you grow as a professional, solve problems, get opportunities, and you help them, is actually the constitutive base of the foundation of a strong, modern career.
Reid HoffmanI think I knew how frightened people were [when Donald Trump was elected], and I think I knew that people were worried about their future. I don't think I realized that they would be willing to risk kind of a 1920s Germany in order to blow it all up, not realizing that we've accomplished a lot as Americans, and we want to keep the good things and revolutionize the new things.
Reid HoffmanProbably the biggest mistake that I made personally is I knew early on that I wanted to go into start-ups and creating kind of software that could help change the lives of millions of people. And basically what I did is I kind of went, okay, well, I need a set of titles and I need a checklist of skills, and I ran through all that, and that wasn't a useless thing, but what I didn't realize, and, you know, and no one gave me the right advice for doing this, is that actually your network, in essentially, is your career.
Reid HoffmanThe first set of questions to ask yourself when you're doing cost cutting is relatively straightforward, which is, you know, can you use the necessity of cost cutting as an opportunity to do pruning or trimming for projects that aren't being as successful? But, you know, frequently those are the easy ones. I mean, there's always some kind of social costs internal to the company, but that's the easy way of looking at the future.
Reid Hoffman