Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
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.
00:49:28 · Molly Graham
[00:49:28] S1: Yeah. And I think the second thing that's really different, and we talked about a little bit already, but my message was always you give things away because the only way you can make space for new opportunity is by giving things away. Do you know what I mean? And that has two assumptions under it. One, that it's good to give things away. And two, that there's new opportunity on the other side. And I think this, what I talked about with the fear narrative is one of the things that's driving me nuts in the world. And we talk about it a lot in Glue Club is just this dominant narrative that all these jobs are going away because of AI and all these layoffs that are branded as AI. That is not going to support anybody being in a stance of like, "Yeah, let's delegate everything to these robots. Let's give them every piece of our brain and our data so that we can have all this new opportunity that's coming along." I think it is the hardest conversation to have right now. And to your point about there's lots of people out there that are really excited, there are. And I want that for everyone because this is an incredible moment. I've been in technology for almost 20 years and I've seen a lot, but this is one of those moments. This is the mobile phone on steroids where it's like all sorts of businesses are going to be created. I'm a believer that a lot of jobs are going to be created because of this technology, but I think we've got to start having that conversation in order to get to the place where everyone can be leaning in. Everyone can say, "Oh, it's great to automate all these tasks that I hate because it gives me more time to do the things that I love." Which is, I think to your point about the people that feel amplified by it's like, "Oh, I don't have to do all this boring ass work. I can just focus on the things that bring me joy. I can focus on the things that I'm great at." That's what we want. But while there's this narrative out there that media companies are propagating that says there's nothing for you on the other side, do you know what I mean? We've got universal basic income. Everyone needs to be supported by the state because no one's going to have a job in 10 years. Who the fuck wants to give Legos to robots if that's the narrative? No one. I've heard of it.
00:51:55 · Lenny Rachitsky
[00:51:55] S0: Tim O'Reilly who started O'Reilly Media, awesome smart guy, he came up with web 2. 0 as a concept. He organizes these little intimate camps where he invites people that he thinks can contribute to this conversation to talk about a topic. And this last one is around just what happens with humans when AI does more and more of our job. And it started with him talking to some, I think it was a lawyer who's just like, "Okay, I'm hoarding this very specific knowledge I have about doing this job so that AI cannot do it. It's like I need to protect it because otherwise I'm going to be replaced. They don't need me anymore." And I feel like a lot of people are probably feeling that, a lot of specific niche professions especially.
00:52:38 · Molly Graham
[00:52:38] S1: Yeah, absolutely. And I go back... First of all, yes, of course. How could you not be feeling that way? I don't know. Maybe I'm an abundance person, and maybe I'll regret saying this in six months or five years, but I'm like, "Every piece of data I have from my entire life and some of these conversations I've had like the one with Manoush say, 'You got to lean in.'" You know what I mean? That protection and holding on and gripping to what you know is not the way you thrive in change. It's not the people that define the future. And again, the Manoush story would say lawyers are always going to exist. They are going to look completely different every six years or every three years or whatever. So what do you think the next version of a lawyer looks like? Do you want to be part of designing that? Do you want to be part of creating that? Do you want to be part of figuring that out or do you want to stay here and try to protect what you know? I think that's to me, again, it's scary out there right now, so I don't want to undervalue that, but I think you have to take that stance of agency or we got to use a different word, entrepreneurship. You got to take that stance of, "I want to be part of designing the future of my profession, not protecting the past."
00:54:02 · Lenny Rachitsky, Molly Graham
[00:54:02] S0: I really, really love this framework as almost maybe that's a big part of the advice from this conversation is this way of thinking for Manoush, which is, "My job will be different, but it'll continue to exist." And the question is just, "What will it be?" And let me think about that, prepare for that almost and not try to resist because resisting is not going to work anyway. [00:54:24] S1: Yeah. And if you listen to the Manoush's story, it's such an entrepreneurial story. And I know that not everyone is great at that, but it is very much the, "Let me try this next." For her, I think it was founded in this belief of this profession is evolving and changing, and I want to be part of defining the future of it. And again, I think until the data genuinely tells us otherwise, I would say that is the stance I would take particularly in tech. What would you do if you believe there were going to be more and different interesting engineering jobs in five years? How would you behave if you believed there was opportunity on the other side of letting go?