Hmmm, I loved Jason’s bid to get Amanda to come and join AOL/Netscape and his later tome on keeping talent happy.
That got me thinking about another tough management problem: recruitment.
I wonder how I could hire Jason. Let’s see, he already has millions of dollars. So, it’s gonna be tough to get him on money alone. If that tactic didn’t work with me, I doubt it’ll work on him. Anyway, let’s just say my salary cap is less than AOL’s is so a sheer money strategy won’t work and will probably blow up anyway.
Will sheer love and attention of him do it? Nah. Although it might help get a conversation started. Jason already knows Maryam and I love him. Why? Cause he’s fun to hang around with. His personality is a little over the top, yes, so it’s not for everyone, but I like people who say they are gonna change the world — and then do. When Gates and crew was recruiting people from Borland they sent limos to pick up candidates and take them and their families places. Attention does get noticed. Shel and I picked our book’s publisher at least in small part because they flew to Arizona to meet us and buy us lobster dinner.
How about the chance to be Scoble’s boss? Heheh. That could backfire. Last week someone came up to John Furrier and, upon learning that he worked at Podtech, said “oh, are you working for Scoble?” That seems to happen to a lot of my bosses. Jim Fawcette had that happen to him despite having his own name on the company he owned and ran.
What’s the Microsoft way to get people to work for you who you can’t afford? Get big enough to buy their company. Hmmm, if that happens the last thing I’ll need to worry about is recruiting Calacanis. 
Working with smart people? Yeah, the Stanford University Student Body President is interning with us this summer (seriously! You’ll get to meet her later in the summer) but I bet that won’t get Jason interested. There are lots of smart people at AOL (despite what most of the elitist geeks think about AOL).
How about California’s weather? Possibly, but then he’ll probably bring up that a house like what he lives in is four times more expensive and the schools aren’t as good.
California’s non-smoking and clean-living lifestyle? Possibly, but then he’ll bring up traffic on the 101 and ask whether PodTech has a shuttle from San Francisco like Google does.
Matt Mullenweg, Stewart Butterfield, and Dave Winer only an hour away? Now we’re getting somewhere. That’s something he doesn’t have.
Free passes to Google’s cafeteria? Sssshhhhh, I can’t arrange those until Vic gets his job in a year. Heheh. Just kidding Vic!
A dumptruck load of stock options? Yeah! But then I bet he has a dumptruck of Time Warner stock anyway.
So, how do you recruit a guy who has everything when you have limited resources?
How did Steve Jobs recruit John Sculley (remember, back then John headed Pepsi and Apple was a struggling computer maker). “Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or do you want to change the world?”
Hmmm, does Jason want to sell Web portals for the rest of his life or does he want to change the world of media? Again?
How do you recruit people you really want to work for you (or who you want to work for?)
Update: speaking of recruiting, the JobsBloggers, Gretchen and Zoe, (who used to work at Microsoft too) are on Jim Stroud’s Recruiters’ Lounge podcast. I wonder what they’d think of this topic?