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Telegram founder Pavel Durov on what separates A Players from B Players

October 20, 2025

“I can recall a few instances in my career where firing an engineer actually resulted in an increase in productivity,” Telegram founder Pavel Durov begins.

He gives an example of two Android engineers building an app that are having a hard time hitting deadlines:

“You think, ‘I probably have to hire a third engineer.’ But then you notice that one of [the engineers] is really weird — falling behind schedule, complaining, not assuming responsibility — and you ask, ‘What if I just fired this person?’ Then you fire this person, and in a few weeks you realize you never needed a third engineer. The problem was this guy who created more issues and problems than he solved. It’s so counterintuitive because in developing tech projects, you tend to think that you just throw more people into something and things get solved miraculously.”

Pavel continues:

“The other thing that people don’t realize is how demotivating working with a B Player is. Everyone can tell if the other engineer they’re working with is really competent. If the person is asking the wrong questions and they keep lagging behind, at a certain point if you’re an A Player, you get get this dissatisfaction and feeling that you are not able to realize your full potential and accomplish what you’re really meant to accomplish because of this person working next to you (or pretending to work next to you).”

Pavel reflects on what it is exactly that separates these B Players from A Players:

“In some cases it’s not because the person is lazy . . . It’s not about experience. More often it’s about natural ability and persistence. In 90% of cases, it’s just the inability to focus on one task for an extended period of time. Not everybody has this ability. So for people who do have this ability, it’s an insult to work alongside someone who is distracted and cannot go deep in the projects that they’re responsible for.”