Cursor doesn't hire for roles. It hires people.

At Cursor, looking for a job is not a requirement for getting an offer.

It's spelled out in the company profile Colossus published. The secret of their hiring: the basic unit is not a job description. It's a person.

In most companies, you spot a gap, open a role, search LinkedIn for titles, and put names in a spreadsheet for a recruiter.

At Cursor, names circulate constantly in an internal channel, #hiring-ideas. Everyone sources, everyone closes. And the acceptance rate at Cursor, Colossus writes, "makes elite colleges look like summer camp."

The example that struck me: an engineer in Germany sends them a cold email. The founders fly out to meet him. He says no. A year later, they fly out again. This time he comes back with them to San Francisco.

"No" is often the start of the conversation.

The lesson I take from it: the best people are almost never looking. They're not in your applicants, nor behind "open to work" filters. You have to know who they are before you have a role to offer them.

And to know who they are, you have to look at what they do.