Key takeaways
- Meta Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bosworth recently addressed the question of what kind of person succeeds at the tech giant.
- Bosworth listed several traits he would like to see in an employee, from adaptability to being a good person.
- Bosworth isn’t the only tech leader looking for these traits.
Working in Silicon Valley can be lucrative. Recent federal filings show that research scientists at OpenAI, for example, command salaries ranging from $245,000 to $685,000. Meanwhile, Meta’s software engineers take home $120,000 to $480,000 in base pay at the tech giant.
It takes a special kind of person to unlock these salaries and land a job at a big tech company. Meta Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bosworth addressed the question of what kind of person succeeds at Meta in response to a question on social media. Bosworth is in charge of several divisions at the AI giant, from Metaverse to AI glasses.
“That’s a good question,” Bosworth responded on Instagram earlier this week.
The CTO listed several traits he would like to see in an employee. The first element is to be “constant in the pursuit of greatness.” At his company, people are expected to take real pride and ownership in what they create, and to take the results personally, he explained.
Bosworth also stresses the importance of being able to roll with the punches, which he calls “adaptability.” When plans change, these employees don’t react with reflexive panic. Instead, their first instinct is curiosity and excitement about what the change means for them, he said.
Bosworth oversees departments that have recently undergone budget cuts. In January, Metta began cutting more than 1,000 jobs within its Reality Labs division, moving away from pure virtual reality and into AI and smart glasses.
Bosworth notes that strong employees are also direct in how they speak, and they value the same kind of directness from others. 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 conflict in the workplace, but Bosworth has an approach to dealing with it. In a September 2025 post on his personal blog, Bosworth shared a four-step approach to resolving interpersonal conflicts. The steps are to listen to one person, ask them to consider why the conflict happened, turn to the other side and ask them to consider the situation from another perspective, and finally, bring the two sides together and ask them to reconcile.
The last trait that Bosworth looks for is simply being “a good person.”
Other tech leaders agree.
Bosworth isn’t the only tech leader looking for these traits. Payment processing giant Stripe CEO Patrick Collison said on a podcast in 2018 that he looks for “commitment and competitiveness” in hiring new hires, or an awareness that “it’s hard to do anything important.”
He also tries to find people who have “mutual warmth” and a “desire to make others around them better” — in other words, they’re good people.
Meanwhile, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has repeatedly highlighted empathy as a core leadership and job characteristic, arguing that without empathy and a “learn all” mentality, nothing matters.
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Key takeaways
- Meta Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bosworth recently addressed the question of what kind of person succeeds at the tech giant.
- Bosworth listed several traits he would like to see in an employee, from adaptability to being a good person.
- Bosworth isn’t the only tech leader looking for these traits.
Working in Silicon Valley can be lucrative. Recent federal filings show that research scientists at OpenAI, for example, command salaries ranging from $245,000 to $685,000. Meanwhile, Meta’s software engineers take home $120,000 to $480,000 in base pay at the tech giant.
It takes a special kind of person to unlock these salaries and land a job at a big tech company. Meta Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bosworth addressed the question of what kind of person succeeds at Meta in response to a question on social media. Bosworth is in charge of several divisions at the AI giant, from Metaverse to AI glasses.
