Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
01:24:27 · Molly Graham, Lenny Rachitsky
[01:24:27] S1: I mean, it'll be fascinating. We'll reflect on this in six months and see what- [01:24:31] S0: That's what I was thinking. We're in the middle of it right now. It's like Elizabeth Stone had a really good way of framing it. We're in the storming phase and then there's the norming phase. I have no idea what that actually means, but it sounds right. Storming, norming. [01:24:45] S1: Well, there's storming, norming, and then there's performing. But the other thing that nobody tells you about that framework is that you can go backwards. You often go through cycles. It's a model on team development and you go through storming and then you go through norming and then you go for performing, but you can slip from performing into storming, and I feel like we're going to see a lot of that. [01:25:06] S0: Oh, boy. Yeah. It's very cool to be living through this history, right? It's easy to take for granted just how this is. It's like we're living through history.
01:25:18 · Molly Graham
[01:25:18] S1: It's funny you say that because that's actually something I always talk about when I do these Lego speeches is being inside of a rapidly growing company feels like being inside of a tornado. Do you know what I mean? It's like it is so absorbing and I don't know, shit just flying at you at all times and everything's changing all the time. And it is so easy in that state to lose the forest for the trees. You can get really bogged down or stuck in obsessing about this person or this thing or feeling undervalued. And a lot of what I say to folks in those speeches is you got to zoom out. You got to think about what is the story that I want to tell on the other side of this? It's less about your title or all these things than it is about, I was here and I helped build this. I talk about it as a giant Lego sculpture. So you're like, "Let's pretend it's a tiger". You're going to leave here with this incredible story. You built the feed and then you were part of building the face and then you rebuilt the butt three times and then you realized it wasn't just a tiger, it was a whole zoo. That is what it feels like to be inside of these rapidly changing companies. And I wonder... As you were saying that, what I was thinking about is, gosh, imagine the stories we're going to be telling in five or 10 years. I was there when, here's what I thought that was right. Here's what I though that was wrong. I was the first person to say this. Oh, man. I was so wrong about that. You are living through history that you will be telling stories about to whatever generation of new grads shows up in 10 years. What do you want your part of that story to be? How are you going to tell that story? I think there is something about zooming out and realizing it is hard and there is a lot of change going on, but there is a crazy fun story that we're all going to be telling on the other side of this. We just don't know what it is yet.
01:27:12 · Lenny Rachitsky, Molly Graham
[01:27:12] S0: Hopefully not just talking to our AGI, "Tell me more. Tell me more, Molly." [01:27:17] S1: Totally. That's so fascinating. [01:27:19] S0: Yeah, exactly. "You're so great. You're so smart." Oh, man. Okay. What if we do just some bullet points, like takeaways for folks, just like here's a few key things to keep in mind coming from this giving away your Legos framework, see where your mind goes and then maybe I'll add a few for my notes.
01:27:37 · Molly Graham, Lenny Rachitsky
[01:27:37] S1: Okay. To me, most important is change is scary and hard, but that doesn't mean it's bad. That means you have to embrace the emotions that come with it, but you also have to lean into it and you should let go. Yes, it's scary and yes, it feels like there may not be anything waiting on the other side, but what's the alternative, to hold on to this thing that might be slowly dying? That's not safe either. So leaning into change feels like to me the most important thing for folks to take away. I think as part of that, I would just say grief is part of this and sometimes grief needs a funeral or do what you got to do to be sad. Let your teams be sad. Let the people around you make space for that because with change comes shedding things that you loved and that sucks. I think one of the other things that feels like it really came out, Lenny, is there is opportunity here and we got to start ignoring or muting or whatever some of this fear narrative because right now the data isn't saying there are no jobs for you. The data is saying actually there's going to be a lot of opportunity created by this, particularly if you're willing to lean into reinvention, not what was the form of your job two years ago, but what might it be in five years? What else? I guess breaking down walls is the other thing I was thinking, but what came to your list? [01:29:19] S0: Well, there's the minute kind of perspective of imagine your job isn't going to go away, imagine your job will continue, but be different.
01:29:19 · Lenny Rachitsky, Molly Graham
[01:29:19] S0: Well, there's the minute kind of perspective of imagine your job isn't going to go away, imagine your job will continue, but be different. [01:29:22] S1: Yeah, exactly. It was a real mind change for me when she said that because I was like, " Whoa. Yeah, what is engineering going to look like in five years?" [01:29:35] S0: Right. It's not going to go away. It's going to be something different. [01:29:38] S1: Maybe there'll be more of it, like journalism. There's more journalists out there for better or for worse. [01:29:43] S0: Yeah. And so far there's more PMs, more product, more engineers. So far that's going well. Another kind of takeaway is just be deliberate about what you give to AI. And there's a few ways to think about it. One is just like what is AI going to do a terrible job at? Don't do that. What is it you love that you don't want it to take for you? How do you avoid brain rot and just overrelying in AI? There's a few things there, just AI is not going to... Don't give everything to AI. [01:30:11] S1: Yeah. And I think also for a lot of us acknowledging that AI is not this super intelligent being, it is much more like an intern, and that means literally think about it as an intern. What would you give to an intern and what would you never give them? [01:30:11] S0: I think that's the core of it.
01:30:11 · Lenny Rachitsky, Molly Graham
[01:30:11] S0: I think that's the core of it. [01:30:28] S1: Yeah. And I feel like... Well, I feel like we said this, but there just may be some things we should never give away, and that is genuinely different. Give away your Legos, but be discerning about what you should keep and what should be human and what humans are here for. I think that's part of the conversation for the next however many years is what are humans uniquely good at? [01:30:52] S0: And what I think about there, just very concretely in my mind is be the person that guides what you're doing to a place, to the vision you have of the world you want, not just the simplest thing, not the thing that AI is kind of pointing to, just what do you actually want, and that's kind of our job for a while. [01:31:09] S1: Yeah. And at the individual level, how can this new tool, this fun, intelligent intern that you've hired, let you do more of what you love, let you bring more joy into the world, let you lean into the things that you love doing. How can it amplify you instead of feeling like all you're doing is losing things to it? [01:31:28] S0: What a moment in time we're in, Molly, right now, trying to figure all this out. [01:31:32] S1: We're going to re-watch this in a year or two and make fun of ourselves. [01:31:35] S0: Oh, we're going to be, "We nailed it. We got everything right." [01:31:39] S1: Perfect.