Here’s the Surprising Trait the CTO of a Tech Giant Swears By When Hiring—And Why It Could Make or Break Your Career!

Working in Silicon Valley can be lucrative. Recent federal filings show that research scientists at OpenAI, for instance, command salaries from $245,000 to $685,000. Meanwhile, software engineers at Meta take home $120,000 to $480,000 in base salary at the tech giant.

It takes a special kind of person to unlock these salaries and get hired at a Big Tech company. Andrew Bosworth, Meta’s chief technology officer, addressed the question of what “type of person” succeeded at Meta in response to a query on social media. Bosworth is in charge of numerous divisions at the AI giant, from the metaverse to AI glasses. 

“It’s a good question,” Bosworth responded on Instagram earlier this week.

The CTO listed several traits that he would like to see in an employee. The first element is being “relentless in pursuit of doing great work.” At his company, people are expected to feel real pride and ownership in what they build, and to take the results personally, he explained.

Bosworth also emphasized the importance of being able to roll with the punches, what he calls being “adaptable.” When plans shift, these employees don’t react with reflexive fear; instead, their first instinct is curiosity and excitement about what the change could mean for them, he said.

Bosworth oversees departments that have recently undergone budget cuts. In January, Meta began cutting over 1,000 jobs within its Reality Labs division, indicating a shift away from pure virtual reality and toward AI and smart glasses. 

Strong employees are also straightforward in how they speak, and they value the same kind of directness from others, Bosworth noted. He added that employees should accept direct feedback in the spirit in which it is given and use it to move forward. 

Direct communication can lead to conflicts in the workplace, but Bosworth has an approach to tackle that. In a post published to his personal blog in September 2025, Bosworth shared a four-step approach to resolving interpersonal conflict. The steps are to listen to one person, ask them to reflect on why the conflict happened, turn to the other party and ask them to consider the situation from another point of view and finally, bring the two sides together and ask them to reconcile. 

The final trait that Bosworth looks for is simply being “a good person.” 

Other tech leaders agree

Bosworth isn’t the only tech leader who looks for these traits. Patrick Collison, CEO of payment processing giant Stripe, said on a podcast in 2018 that he looks for “a determination and competitiveness” in new hires, or an awareness that “doing anything of significance is hard.” 

He also tries to find people who have “interpersonal warmth” and “a desire to make others around them better” — in other words, they are good people. 

Meanwhile, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has repeatedly highlighted empathy as a core leadership and hiring trait, arguing that nothing else matters without empathy and a “learn-it-all” mindset. 

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Working in Silicon Valley can be lucrative. Recent federal filings show that research scientists at OpenAI, for instance, command salaries from $245,000 to $685,000. Meanwhile, software engineers at Meta take home $120,000 to $480,000 in base salary at the tech giant.

It takes a special kind of person to unlock these salaries and get hired at a Big Tech company. Andrew Bosworth, Meta’s chief technology officer, addressed the question of what “type of person” succeeded at Meta in response to a query on social media. Bosworth is in charge of numerous divisions at the AI giant, from the metaverse to AI glasses.