Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
01:12:31 · Lenny Rachitsky, Molly Graham
[01:12:31] S0: I completely agree. In my last podcast conversation, I don't know when will come out when, is about this fear of the permanent underclass that if you don't catch up, if you're not on top of this, you're going to be left behind. I think there is definitely a part of that in a sense of many companies are doing extremely well and people that have joined those companies are going to be very successful and some companies aren't, and there's this whole other discussion around the socioeconomic divide growing significantly in the world and just what that causes in a world where there are many wealthy people, many more than there have ever existed. That's its own thing. We don't need to get all into that. [01:13:05] S1: Well, I hope you do many episodes on that someday, Lenny. But it is another area where I'm like, "I'm not sure we know what's real yet." I think it's obviously one of the most important conversations, but what is real and what is the future actually going to look like? To me, the stories out in the world, they're not real yet. We don't know, and I think that's important to name.
01:13:29 · Lenny Rachitsky
[01:13:29] S0: Oh, man. That's a big topic. The interesting part you mentioned that I wanted to follow thread on is this idea of you're not behind. What really helped me see this is Ian Silber, head of design at OpenAI was on the podcast recently and he made this really good point. He's like, "This is the best time in history to be a designer. If you just came in fresh as a new grad into design and just become really... You just start with all these tools that designers have now, you can accelerate so quickly and learn to do design faster than anyone's ever learned to do design." And I feel that with Clawdbot recently came out. There's all these skills people have built over time with Codex and Claude Code. I'm such a pro with all these tools and now it's just the tools are getting so much smarter you don't need a lot of the scaffolding that people have built over time. If someone were to start fresh today and try Clawdbot or even in Codex, you don't need to have spent years being on top of all of the news and all of the updates to it. You could just dive right in and build as much as people that have been on it for a long time could build. I feel like the actual main skill to build, something I've been thinking about... I tweeted this, but I feel like I didn't get enough traction because I think it's very important. I feel like the biggest skill to build right now is when you're about to do something to ask yourself, "Can AI help me with this thing?" Because once you get good at that, and I've been getting... I think about the stimulus and response kind of thing of meditation, you create more space between stimulus and response if you learn to be aware of what's [inaudible 01:15:05]. I feel like you need to insert, "Can AI help me with this?" Which sounds like dirty and what the hell? Why would you want AI? But I feel like that's a really new skill because then you can start... As these AI tools get better, you can start to leverage them in all these different ways that I think is what separates a lot of people right now.
01:15:23 · Molly Graham, Lenny Rachitsky
[01:15:23] S1: No, totally. And it goes to that point about the walls. I think those of us that have been around a long time and there's a way that things were done, there's a way that product was built, there's all these ways, those are walls. They're walls, they're old. And part of what we need to do, and I think part of what you're saying is you're actually little bit at an advantage if you don't know those walls exist. If you approach the world as if engineers didn't have a different role from X or Y or Z, or this is the way things are done, there is an advantage to being able to say, "What if? What if I just did it?" And to just try. And to your point to always think, "Hey, what's the best use of my time? And then what could an agent or a robot do for me?" And I think that's partially the point about the learners. If you're able to shed the sort of things you think you know and lean into the possibility and the first principles thinking, which I know you have a great article about too, that I think is going to define the future. Those are going to be the people that are going to shape what this thing looks like. [01:16:36] S0: Yeah. There's also a thread here around ambition that's been coming up a lot on the podcast. [01:16:42] S1: Oh, interesting.
01:16:42 · Molly Graham, Lenny Rachitsky
[01:16:42] S1: Oh, interesting. [01:16:43] S0: Yeah. This idea that now that it's so easy to do whatever you want, just describe it and it's built. The thing that we need to... In addition to asking ourselves, can AI help me with this thing is how do we be more ambitious with this idea? Because the tools can now just do so much and they're just waiting for you to tell me something more ambitious than that. That's all you got for me? And human nature doesn't... We're not used to end product teams and business just thinking about the most ambitious version of a thing. We're thinking about the MVP and what's the quickest way to get this out, and now it feels like the push is how do we think big? What's the hardest thing we can ask this AI to do because it may actually just achieve it out of one ask. [01:17:25] S1: Yeah. And I'd also nudge on the idea that, yeah, you can just type something into existence, but one of the other questions you need to ask yourself is it good? Do you know what I mean? This is the slop and the accountability thing, which is like... And if ambition is wrapped up in how do I build something phenomenal that's going to endure, that I'm interested in. If it's just like, how do I make more shit and put it out in the world? One of my questions, this is really frontier, Lenny, is what is the AI slop version of startups? Are we about to see a shit-ton of companies just shipping stuff out into the world that's going to last for six or 12 months and then just disappear or get irrelevant? [01:18:10] S0: Definitely.
01:18:10 · Lenny Rachitsky, Molly Graham
[01:18:10] S0: Definitely. [01:18:11] S1: So okay, great. That doesn't sound fun. How can you be the pioneer of the enduring thing, the thing that's going to still be around in five years, that's going to matter, that's going to be great, not just exist? And again, it goes to the difference between just productivity, like I built a thing, and what is good? What is actually worth it? What's worth other people's time? [01:18:34] S0: Yeah. I think that's a big differentiating opportunity right now instead of just shipping the thing fast, it's what's a very good version of this thing. And people see that. They're like, "Oh, wow. This is different." [01:18:44] S1: Yeah, exactly. I think this goes to the point of what will matter when it comes to human touch, and I think a lot of that is going to come down to the question of what is good and what is worth it and what endures. [01:18:58] S0: Is there anything that we haven't touched on that we should before we try to summarize maybe some key lessons from this freewheeling conversation?
01:19:08 · Molly Graham
[01:19:08] S1: Well, the one thing I just wanted to say is... I was thinking yesterday because of the conversation I was having is like, what do I want every manager or leader out there to know? Because I think the world of the IC is honestly a little more clear. You are more productive and you have all this power and agency around building, and the world that feels very hard to me right now is the world of the managers and the leaders because so much is changing so fast. It's a little bit hard to know what to tell people. It's a little bit hard to know what your team should look like, what matters, what doesn't matter, all that. And so I guess I wanted to say a couple of things to the managers and leaders out there, if you'll give me the sec. The first is understand that you're a role model and that what you do and how you behave is essentially showing your team what good looks like. And that means that how you use AI trickles down, but also how you sit in this moment, how you show up. And for me, what I want a little more space for in the world is to be able to acknowledge what this change feels like. I hope there's more managers out there because of this conversation talking about grief and talking about the emotions that come with change and talking about how hard this is for people. I think that acknowledging what this rate of change does to people's brains and psychologies, it just... Honestly, even acknowledging it makes it easier for people. Like I said, I swear to God, that's most of what the Legos article did is just tell people, "Hey, that thing that you're feeling, other people have felt it before you and it hasn't meant that everything is going to hell in a hand basket. It's meant, oh, you're going through a lot of change really, really fast and it's scary and hard." So the more that leaders can be talking about that, I think the more sane everyone's going to feel and less alone. Knowing that someone at XYZ company is feeling the same way as you makes a difference. And I guess the last thing I just say is I think everyone owns this to some extent, but managers and leaders more so, we need to hold on to the definition of accountability and what good means. I think that's part of the role modeling. What is right to give away to AI and what do we still as humans and people and workers need to own?