Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
01:16:40 · Peter Sellis
[01:16:40] S1: Yeah. I can't help but think this is maybe why it's so hard to come by some of them because you see an [inaudible 01:16:48]. There's basically these three, I bet you could actually come up with this from a synthesis of so many of the amazing product leaders you've had on here, but there are these three oxymorons, I think. There are two wolves inside of the PM three times. One is, I think to be a really good PM, you kind of have to be really confident and that borders on arrogance a lot of the time, especially at certain levels. And so that has to be balanced with some form of humility, really serious humility where you, again, are so confident that what we're doing is the right thing to do and that we have conviction on this path. And also personally, that I will be recognized for my contribution. I can go out there and give credit to exactly who deserves it. The designer who made that last second change that made a huge difference, the engineer that stayed up all night to get out the thing on time for the partner event. I think that this also ties to being a great leader, but having the humility and the attention to detail to know who to give credit to actually comes from this sense of confidence that you kind of know that PMs are going to get too much credit no matter what. And so I think that's the first one. The second one, which I really like and really try and test for in interviews, and I'm not the best interviewer, is you want these people who are extremely organized and very process driven. They understand the value of good process and not too much, not too little, et cetera, and then are just super comfortable with ambiguity, almost to the point of despising authority, almost like pathological demand avoidance. And so it's just like, "I have a checklist for everything, but I'm also comfortable if I have to throw it out and redo it all the time." Or something like that. I think these two wolves are like, if you can demonstrate that through some stories or through some examples, that's so attractive to me in a candidate. It's like, yeah, I'm really comfortable with ambiguity, but that doesn't mean I just am not organized or I hate process. Another one of those things where it's really trendy to just say all process is useless, but it's like I like somebody who has both those wolves.
01:19:16 · Peter Sellis, Lenny Rachitsky
And then I think the last one is a little more obvious, but a lot of the great PMs that I've worked with really just always have some form of long-term thinking in their mind. They just know how they want the world to look six months, a year, two years from now, and they're patient and they know what building blocks need to come into place for the system to work, but yet on a day-to-day basis, their bias for action is just borderline annoying. They're just such good people at setting the pace of the entire company. When they wake up in the morning, the company wakes up, the group wakes up, the team wakes up, whatever it is. I think that combination of urgency and bias for action with long-term thinking, those are my three oxymorons, the three pairs of wolves inside every great PM. [01:20:09] S0: Amazing description of what makes a great PM. Such a cool way to think about it. Nikhyl Singhal was on the podcast a couple times and he talks about the, it's like a different way of thinking about it, but he talks about the shadow. You have a superpower, but then there's the shadow of what the downside of that is. It's a different thing, but I love this. It's just a really interesting way to just think about what is a great PM. Okay. One final thing before we get to a very exciting lightning round, I want to take us to Contrarian Corner, which is a recurring podcast segment where I feel like you're going to have some good stuff here. The question is just, what's something you believe that most other people don't?
01:20:09 · Lenny Rachitsky, Peter Sellis
[01:20:09] S0: Amazing description of what makes a great PM. Such a cool way to think about it. Nikhyl Singhal was on the podcast a couple times and he talks about the, it's like a different way of thinking about it, but he talks about the shadow. You have a superpower, but then there's the shadow of what the downside of that is. It's a different thing, but I love this. It's just a really interesting way to just think about what is a great PM. Okay. One final thing before we get to a very exciting lightning round, I want to take us to Contrarian Corner, which is a recurring podcast segment where I feel like you're going to have some good stuff here. The question is just, what's something you believe that most other people don't? [01:20:46] S1: Being contrarian is tough these days. Very trendy to be contrarian, which is ironic. So maybe I should just be conformist. Can I break this into a light spicy, medium spicy, heavy spicy? [01:20:58] S0: Love that. Let's do it.
01:21:00 · Peter Sellis
[01:21:00] S1: Okay. Okay. So my light spicy, I don't think everyone would disagree with this, but some may. I think as a product manager in particular, I don't think we have time to go into everything, but I think the most important career decision you make is who your partner is, who you marry, who you spend your time with personally. I think this has both growth and just knock on effects that are really hard to quantify. And yeah, there's no amount of Lenny podcasts you can listen to and internalize that will match finding a great partner who will help you, support you, and help you grow and be intellectually a sounding board for you. So I think that's probably my light take because I think a lot of people would agree to that in some degree. I know my super spicy one, so that one I don't have think of. On the medium spicy, this is kind of related to my museum curator comment. I think a lot of people who I look up to in terms of taste, and maybe it's just being in Los Angeles, but I care a lot about stuff like art, art behind me, stuff like that, is I've noticed that the difference, especially in wealthy people between those who have taste and those who are seen as gauche or something like that is, the ones with taste stop one step before everybody else does. Maybe they're collecting art in a certain trend, but then they realize when things are, whatever the old phrase is, jumping the shark or when things are hitting a certain level where it's like, "Okay, now's the time to stop and look for something new." And I think that what you haven't shipped, what you've built and tried and held in your hands and loved, but haven't brought to the world, I think is a test for that in some ways. And so yeah, I don't know if that's super contrarian, but I think you can measure a lot is people with great taste seem to just know when to take something and get passionate about something and then kind of like-
01:23:26 · Lenny Rachitsky
[01:23:26] S0: When it gets cringe.
01:23:27 · Peter Sellis
[01:23:27] S1: Yeah, maybe cringe is it. Yeah, let it go. My spiciest one, and we'll bring it back here to the start of the podcast. Why am I doing this podcast now? You and I have known each other, been in group chats, chatted all the time for a long time. This one's probably a take where I don't even know if I'd be super comfortable saying it depending on my employer. I think that to truly create great consumer products for certain cohorts of humans, of users, the product managers and designers that you put on some of those products, there are certain inalienable traits about those product managers that cannot be learned, cannot be acquired, that are essential to creating truly great consumer products. And by that I mean literally gender, race, ethnicity, socioeconomic background. And what I mean by this is not like, oh, if you want to create a product for young Black men, you need to hire young Black men. I don't mean stuff like that. I just mean, I don't know how comfortable I'm giving examples, but I do think that we are not comfortable as a society admitting this, but there are certain things about how people are brought up, who they are biologically, things like that, that suit them to better working on certain consumer products because at their core, most consumer products are, and Nikita talks about this too, are hitting against certain parts of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. And in order to understand those needs really well, I think there are certain people with backgrounds, upbringings, et cetera, that make them better at that. That doesn't mean you can hire for it. That doesn't mean you can judge a book by its cover, things like that. And that's why it's such a spicy take is it's not necessarily even actionable in many situations, but yeah, maybe I'll leave it at that before I get myself-