Makoto Nakashita

Cofounder, Atama Plus

Search every verified Makoto Nakashita interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Makoto Nakashita, cofounder of atama plus, discussed the company’s engineering hiring approach during an April 2021 panel at the ENGINEER Career Design Week event, alongside representatives from LayerX and RevComm. He described atama plus as aligning all employees around the mission of “making students win,” and said the most important hiring condition is whether candidates strongly empathize with that mission and want to work toward it. For engineers specifically, he noted that a passion for technology is also key, adding that engineers at the company explain new technologies to him enthusiastically despite his own lack of technical background. Nakashita also recounted a past hiring failure that led to a major change in their process. Initially, he conducted all interviews himself because the team was busy with development. After a young engineer questioned why the team was not involved in selecting its own future colleagues, Nakashita said he agreed and shifted to having the whole team interview candidates for a period. He credited this change with improving their hiring outcomes and said the company continues to refine its approach.