# Brie Wolfson - Inside Cursor (Highlights)  ## Metadata **Review**:: [readwise.io](https://readwise.io/bookreview/56302331) **Source**:: #from/readwise #from/reader **Zettel**:: #zettel/fleeting **Status**:: #x **Authors**:: [[Brie Wolfson]] **Full Title**:: Inside Cursor **Category**:: #articles #readwise/articles **Category Icon**:: 📰 **URL**:: [joincolossus.com](https://joincolossus.com/article/inside-cursor/) **Host**:: [[joincolossus.com]] **Highlighted**:: [[2025-11-17]] **Created**:: [[2025-11-22]] ## Highlights - To hold him over while he got used to the pace of things, someone on the Cursor team created an AI menu generator for him to lean on. Now, he’s in Slack with the rest of the team, sharing the new dishes he’s making, enjoying praise for classic favorites, and taking requests for things to try. At Cursor, even the chef is high-agency. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01ka8wq4tp6h044m8an9p5zpw3)) ^958337094 - When I asked co-founder Sualeh Asif what he’s most concerned about when it comes to company-building, he responded, “People start talking about the weather at meals.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01ka8wrbp0z1fxb386sw3k8enx)) ^958337135 - At Cursor, the recruiting process looks like this: post the name of someone really, really good in the #hiring-ideas channel in Slack, swarm that person with attention, conduct team interviews (wide range of “process” here), and if the desire is mutual, they start on Monday. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01ka8wwcbhc52x4weggp9jghtc)) ^958337352 Post the name to discuss should we hire. - Another go-to tactic is to suggest “just dropping by HQ some time,” on the accurate assumption that time in the office is often a magical moment for recruits. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01ka8wz1r7rn6zv4hk2agy1e2h)) ^958337453 Be friends first. - But as Oskar told me with a smirk, “‘No’ is often the start of the conversation.” A year later, the founders were on a plane to Germany again, and this time Lukas came back with them to SF. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01ka8x3mbf7pawaem4g3rzh89j)) ^958337790 - Michael often says he wants Cursor to be a “haven for self-motivated individual contributors.” And so far, it is. In the House of ICs (individual contributors), people generally just make things happen through their own enthusiasm and force of will rather than rely on managers to do their bidding. IC is genuinely the highest-status position at the company. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01ka8x6g8xxaywqms7w7k1fvx3)) ^958338027 - There is no 9-9-6 mandate. There is, however, a meaningful percentage of the team that loves what they do and cares about their work so much that they just work a lot. The pace and volume of work is entirely self-imposed. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01ka8xeey0325n1yk8sdeay8ck)) ^958338350 - Cursor probably ranks the highest in the world in terms of the average number of hours using the company’s main product per employee per week. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01ka8xfpw3yt63nq3x4pc5pybs)) ^958338445 - Fuzz is my favorite Cursor ritual. When a big ship is imminent (think a new client release or website update), everyone gets in a room and tries to break it. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01ka8xsvp54h4qd3cv5pzk707w)) ^958338926 - Aside from the clack of fingers on keyboards, “fuzz” is silent, as people spend 60 minutes identifying bugs, UI nits, unconsidered edge-cases, or unpolished corners worth fixing and post them in Slack. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01ka8xv95j99e85w3eqhqrnvx6)) ^958338974 - At Cursor, people poke and prod each other’s work a lot. This can be quite jarring for folks who haven’t operated in that kind of culture before. Top builders know what great products feel like, so people can get very opinionated about how things *should* work. They’ll liberally offer feedback on what is missing to hit the bar, and extra hands to help get it there. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01ka8xzf9w23h749mj232pqr1g)) ^958339236 - The “friction” here works because everyone genuinely wants the best for the product and each other. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01ka8y0sxszdwsgqy80xv65dtm)) ^958339294 - “You should be careful who your users are, because they are going to pull your product in a particular direction.” Cursor explicitly wants to be pulled in the direction of the people at the peak of their craft. This, they believe, is the approach required to *transform* the way we build software, vs. make incremental improvements. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01ka8y2fz5hmpjeqfpqp6zv00c)) ^958339430 - I’ve also observed the virtues of “designing for the ceiling vs. the floor” play out in the engineering interviewing process. Cursor interviews are known to be very difficult for candidates, particularly the coding challenges. When I asked the team about this, they insisted that “it’s hard to show off how good you are on something too easy,” and that they were “willing to accept false negatives to avoid false positives.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01ka8y39gnckyzkw136cmtspbb)) ^958339491 - “What is the ceiling-raising version of this?” It generally leads to much more ambitious thinking. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01ka8y432kx3ngxs0kkm5tpb1v)) ^958339524 - What happens when the right tool is put into the hands of people that want to build impactful, enduring software? *Actually* close the gap between idea and reality. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01ka8yaaj0d5648hmx36nr4t46)) ^958339970 - Michael sends some explicit reminders in this department; at all hands, he’ll repeat things like “growth can hide poor execution.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01ka8y5pf5mabh25r0erv6cgxe)) ^958339609