Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
00:42:11 · Molly Graham
[00:42:11] S1: I know. That's the one that's hard to talk about today. Yeah, make yourself irrelevant, everybody. It's going to go great. Yeah, it's funny. When AI first really took off, it took me a while to really understand what was going on. In total honesty, I was a skeptic for a while where I was like, "We've been automating things for a while. What is this?" But eventually, I got on board and all of a sudden I was like, "Oh." You know that thing I used to do before I went to give a speech at someone's company where I was like, "How fast is your headcount growing?" For me, that was the only symbol I had of, "Are there people to give Legos to?" If I'm going to get up on stage and be like, "Give away your Legos," a lot of times people are like, "Wait a minute. We're not hiring anyone." Who do I give it to? But now, I was like, "Oh, okay. This message is even more relevant because everyone can try to automate parts of their job and everyone can give Legos away." And I will tell you, it has been an interesting journey realizing how different it is to give things away to robots than it is to give them to a human. And principally, the point of Legos was you take this thing you've been working on and you fully hand it to someone else. One of my favorite questions that I get asked at companies when I do the Legos talk is, "What is the best way to give Legos away to someone else?" And I love it because I think basically people expect me to be like, "So you should incredibly, carefully hand this Lego to this person and explain to them exactly why you put it in the position you put it in. Perfectly describe your tower. Make sure they have an instruction manual that they won't fuck up." And my answer is actually, "No. The best way to give Legos away is to chuck them at their face and run in the other direction," because our tendency, again, is towards control. Our tendency is to be like, "You will build this tower exactly how I built it and you will not mess it up." But actually the point is, "No, you're giving it away. You need to fully separate your mind. You need to just hand it to them and trust that the future of whatever that tower is belongs to them." There is both obviously a lot of fear and a whole bunch of stuff that comes with that, but there's a huge amount of freedom. You take this brain space and you ship it to them.
00:44:42 · Molly Graham, Lenny Rachitsky
Interestingly, one of my biggest realizations was that delegating something to a robot is not the same as giving it to a human because you cannot get rid of the oversight. Right? It's more like delegating something to someone on your team. You still own it. Yes, we've gotten more efficient because the robots can do X, Y, and Z for us, but it's not the same as giving it away to a human because we still own the oversight. We still own the sort of final product. And that means the mental tax stays with you. So yes, in some ways I can do more, but psychologically I still have all the burden of all the stuff that all the robots are doing. And I think that does make it quite different because it just means you don't have as much space to then go on to the new things. The cost of oversight is not zero. Do you know what I mean? Again, I wonder if this is part of what's going on with some of your burnout data is just, "All of a sudden I'm overseeing all these robots and maybe all these humans and it's more." So anyway, I think that's one of the biggest differences is just it isn't exactly the same. It's the difference between transferring a Lego to someone where you genuinely get rid of it versus delegating a Lego to someone. [00:46:02] S0: It's so funny the way you described it where you need to disconnect from the responsibility of this thing now. And it's the opposite now where somebody else is doing this, the AI, but you're still responsible. [00:46:15] S1: Yeah.
00:46:15 · Molly Graham, Lenny Rachitsky
[00:46:15] S1: Yeah. [00:46:15] S0: And so it's like having this Lego tower with this little robot coming through and, "Okay, I'm going to work on this now," but you still have to represent this tower to your boss. [00:46:16] S1: Yeah. [00:46:26] S0: And so I could 100% see this metaphor. Make it clear why it sucks.
00:46:30 · Molly Graham
[00:46:30] S1: If you're a manager, it's a familiar feeling, right? Your team got twice as big and now you just have these weird little robots that occasionally fuck up the tower and you have to be like, "No, no, no. No, no, no. That's not what I said," which is like, again, managing an intern. You get it. But if you're not a manager, if you've never been a manager ... And I do think it's important to name that, like I said, managing robots, those skills are very similar to managing humans. They have less feelings, but it's all the same skills of oversight and giving them context and correcting their work and coaching, and all those skills are the same for managing a robot as they are for managing a human. And a lot of people don't like that shit. So many people actively chose not to become a manager. Do you know what I mean? And so there is exhaustion that comes with if you don't enjoy delegating, if you haven't worked on all these skills for many, many years, then suddenly you are in that stance of management. But it just means literally everyone in the world is a manager now and all you're doing when you're delegating to robots is delegating just like you would to another human on your team. So I always say the max people should be managing is 10 to 12 employees. I've managed bigger teams than that and it was not a good look. And I don't think there's any data that says that people can manage more than that now. And if you count robots, I'm worried for people's psychology, you know what I mean, in terms of the amount you have to hold in your head.
00:48:01 · Lenny Rachitsky, Molly Graham
[00:48:01] S0: Yeah, I build a lot of randoms ... [00:48:01] S1: ... balance you have to hold in your head. [00:48:01] S0: Yeah. I build a lot of random stuff, and I have all these different agents running. And on the one hand, it's so awesome. And all these things get done, and it's just like, "Wow, look at this thing go. I did all these things." And then also I get pinged all day for all these guys. They're like, "What about this? Okay. Well, I'm stuck here. Oh, is this good?" And then I'm like, "Okay, I got to look through this all." Actually, so I work with an actual human engineer also, and it makes you appreciate a human awesome engineer that you could just give a rough idea to, and they could run with it and do an awesome job versus, "No, this sucks. Okay, let's try again and then sit there for five minutes and wait." [00:48:37] S1: It is the difference between managing junior employees and managing senior employees. Do you know what I mean? [00:48:41] S0: Yeah. [00:48:42] S1: AI right now, pretty junior employees. It's not my favorite form of management. I always say, "Give me the high performers, I can turn them into these incredible rocket ships." Managing interns, managing folks that are brand new to the workplace is pretty tiring. And I do think that is what it feels like managing AI. And it's so different, like I said, than throwing a Lego at someone and running the other direction, which you can do with your senior engineer.
00:48:42 · Molly Graham, Lenny Rachitsky
[00:48:42] S1: AI right now, pretty junior employees. It's not my favorite form of management. I always say, "Give me the high performers, I can turn them into these incredible rocket ships." Managing interns, managing folks that are brand new to the workplace is pretty tiring. And I do think that is what it feels like managing AI. And it's so different, like I said, than throwing a Lego at someone and running the other direction, which you can do with your senior engineer. [00:49:07] S0: Such a good point. Okay. We'll get to actual advice. Here's what you should probably do. But before we get there, what else is different about the original advice around giving away Legos? The first one's so good. You made it so obvious why it is very different to give your Legos away to a machine because you're not actually giving away. They're just going to do the work, and then you're still responsible for it, and you have to oversee it.