Deepseek Staffs for Innovation Potential

How did DeepSeek achieve such remarkable capabilites in their recent models? In various interviews, founder Liang Wenfeng explains his approach on staffing a culture of innovation.

KR Asia profiles the company in Fresh faces, bold results: DeepSeek’s rise in AI, writing:

Innovation at DeepSeek thrives in the untested synergy of young talents working within a nontraditional organizational framework.

DeepSeek, however, prefers untested talent. A headhunter familiar with the company’s hiring practices told 36Kr, “DeepSeek does not recruit senior tech professionals. The upper limit is around three to five years of experience, and those with over eight years are often rejected outright.”

Beyond education, DeepSeek evaluates candidates on their academic and competitive achievements. Third-party collaborators revealed that competition results weigh heavily—anything below a gold medal is typically excluded.

This mirrors the approach, described by Mike Sarraille and George Randle’s The Talent War, of hiring for potential and fit within your organization, over specific hard-skills in an area.

[…] DeepSeek adopts a flat, academic-style management structure. Members work in project-based groups without fixed roles or strict hierarchies. Each person takes on tasks matching their expertise, with challenges addressed through group discussions or advice from other experts.

Liang described this as a bottom-up approach with natural division of labor during his interview with 36Kr: “Everyone brings unique experiences and ideas. They don’t need to be pushed. Once an idea shows potential, we reallocate resources from the top down.”

Here, Liang’s approach aligns with Dan Pink’s book Drive by creating opportunities for autonomy, mastery and purpose. It also reminds me of how Salesforce runs an internal career fair to allow engineers to easily switch teams every few months. The internal market enables people to have autonomy, and incentivizes leaders to articulate impactful projects that people will want to work on.

As another interview, published in The China Academy, Liang says:

In disruptive tech, closed-source moats are fleeting. Even OpenAI’s closed-source model can’t prevent others from catching up. Therefore, our real moat lies in our team’s growth—accumulating know-how, fostering an innovative culture. Open-sourcing and publishing papers don’t result in significant losses. For technologists, being followed is rewarding. Open-source is cultural, not just commercial. Giving back is an honor, and it attracts talent.

— via Gergely Orosz’s The Pulse #122: DeepSeek rocks the tech industry