Recruiting, both for myself and for other companies (potentially yours)

I have two small requests, both of which I’ll elaborate on further down in this post.

• If you run a company or are part of a team that may be interested in recruiting technical talent from the 3blue1brown audience, please fill out this form, and I’ll follow up with you.

• I have a job posting for an operations role. If someone you know is a good fit, please pass it along, and if you’re interested, feel free to apply.

Looking back 10 years, looking forward 10 more

Shockingly, I’ve been making videos for over a decade now.

For most of that time, I’ve been happily making videos more or less on my own. Well, that’s not exactly true or fair. There have been (delightful) contractors I’ve worked with along the way, most notably for music and hand-drawn illustrations, and for SoME. Several videos have been more collaborative and co-authored; the one on holograms or the one on the Basel problem both come to mind. However, by and large, the writing, animating, and editing of a typical 3bluebrown video is a one-man shop.

And I love it!

It’s amazing how great it can feel to start a day with nothing on the calendar, no team to manage, no customers to interface with, no applications to review, and instead to become fully absorbed in writing, animating, and editing a video. The production is undoubtedly slower for it, but I’ve never minded that too much. Quantity has never been the goal.

I’m not naive, though, and I’ve been aware of how such a solo mode of creation grates against two important facts. 1) There is value in specialized labor and leveraging oneself. 2) The best ideas are often those born out of collaboration.

Growing a team is the “obvious” move. But in 10 years of making videos, I’ve seen many cases around me where a channel grows, and its production capacity grows, but something ineffable is lost. It’s something in that space between the old days when a typical YouTube channel was just some person making videos, and the modern diaspora of thousands of small media companies.

For all its potential inefficiencies, crafting a project from start to finish has always brought me great joy. My hope has been that each video feels like a personal project. It’s me speaking to you through the screen, not mediated by a production studio in between.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with high-output production studios; many of the greatest videos come from them. However, as a viewer, I find myself drawn to the channels that have remained very personal to the creator, and as a friend of many YouTubers, I’ve noticed how many of my colleagues in the space end up unfortunately stressed and exhausted by their jobs.

This is all to say, despite plenty of opportunities to grow the business and to grow a team over the years, it’s something I’ve very deliberately declined out of a clear view of how I like to spend my own working hours, and what kind of channel I want to produce.

That said, sometimes the “obvious” move is, well, the obvious move.

Reflecting on the last 10 years, and looking forward to the next 10, there is a lot I feel inspired to do. I would love to make many more “Essence of ____” style series that genuinely help students build intuition for their course. I have hundreds of topics that have accumulated on my wish list that I know would make fun and inspiring videos. I receive hundreds (thousands?) more via requests each year. Moreover, the character of videos has plenty of room to broaden in ways that would benefit from complementary skillsets, e.g. incorporating more of the human stories behind these topics with hand-drawn illustration.

I’m aware of my own limitations here, and I’d like the next chapter to involve putting together a small team to help chip away at all of this. I think I’ll always see the channel as a personal project, more than a company, and I’d like it to feel that way to viewers, too. With care, though, that’s not incompatible with adding a few more rowers in the boat.

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“Great!” I hear some of you say, “Where do I apply?” If you’re interested in joining the creative side, e.g., animating, illustrating, or editing, hold your horses for right now. I will put out applications for those roles in a bit, hopefully in a month or two, but I don’t have the capacity this month to address them.

I’m sharing this post now for two reasons. First, there is one role I’m actively hiring for right now.

Hiring for general operations

I’m looking for someone to help manage and own projects within 3blue1brown, especially including those that are not directly part of core video creation. I’m open to a diverse range of backgrounds. The word “operations,” for all its vagueness, seems closest to what I have in mind, though similar roles elsewhere have fallen under names like “producer” or “general manager”. There is also a sprinkling of BD and strategy in the job, though I care less if that’s part of one’s previous work experience.

Here is an application giving more details.

What’s most important is that a candidate is aligned with the mission of 3blue1brown, stays on top of logistics, and can be strategic about shaping the scope and approach of a given project. A background in video production is not strongly necessary, but it helps. Likewise, for a background in math, and any experience coding. One part of the job, especially early on, will be helping to initiate and manage a recruitment-oriented business model for the channel.

And this brings us to my second request.

3b1b Talent

Many companies are interested in recruiting mathematically and technically talented people. The audience of 3blue1brown contains many such people. I know, because I meet them all the time, especially when visiting colleges, and I’m blown away. Some of them are just starting off their careers, or are open to changing jobs, and would find value in being exposed to opportunities with math-enthusiastic teams.

Next year, to support the growth I have in mind, I will experiment with a supplementary business model to help make these connections. The concept I have in mind is to have a simple page on my website that features a selection of partner companies whose teams would be compelling for a 3b1b audience member to join, collectively representing a diversity of job types and industry categories. It stands to be most fun if the partnered companies feature something contentful that audience members may enjoy, like a nerd-sniping technical puzzle representative of the kinds of problem-solving skills their team values.

At the end of the videos, I’d briefly highlight the page and its premise (a virtual career fair, basically) and encourage interested audience members to explore it. It’s important to me that such mentions be relatively light-touch and not influence the video content itself.

If you run a company or are part of a team that may be interested in joining the initial pilot for this concept, please reach out via this form.

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It’s worth acknowledging that for many years now, I’ve declined brand integrations and sponsorships on the channel. In fact, a big part of the pitch for Patreon support was this lack of sponsorships, and the qualms I have about it as a business model.

This recruiting concept is, to an extent, a departure from that, and it would feel disingenuous for me not to call that out. Done right, though, I see a chance for a genuine win-win-win that sidesteps many of the misaligned incentives I take issue with.

I could write up a full post on why I think that, and perhaps upon launching it, I will. For now, I’ll spare you the full thought dump and instead simply tell you I’m thinking about it carefully and am receptive to critical feedback. If this helps connect viewers with roles they’d enjoy on teams they’d enjoy working with, and if it helps with some team expansion goals, it would be a shame not to try it on for size.

That’s all for now!
-Grant