Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
00:31:53 · Josh Woodward
[00:31:53] S1: Yeah, I feel like there's a whole lot out there on taste and judgment and vibe coding and all of that. I guess the things I'm looking for, I'm always trying to find what are the misprice signals? And so, one I think is we'll hear sometimes people talk about what's someone's learning rate. Do they have a growth mindset? What's their learning rate? I'm actually looking a lot right now for people, what's their unlearning rate? How fast can they learn something and then walk away from it? Based on maybe what they're seeing when they test their product or something. So unlearning rate is one. Another one I'm interested in, I read a book a year or so ago about Roger Federer, the amazing tennis player. And there was this phrase in there about Federer had explosive endurance. It's just this beautiful turn of phrase and with the alliteration and everything, but it's like there's something around how are people taking care of themselves and the people around them where they can go really hard and that's the explosive part, but they can do it over a while and they find ways to pace themselves. In Labs, we have seasons of Labs where we talk about this. So I think that explosive endurance, this unlearning rate. And then maybe another one I would say is as much as coding and other things are becoming maybe trending towards you being able to direct lots of agents and not having to work with as many people, I still feel like collaboration and how you work with people matters even more now. And one of the things we look a lot for is can someone blend and bridge these worlds where they're incredible collaborator with an agent or a swarm of agents, but also with people? And I guess what we believe on the Labs team and on the Gemini team is that there's still just so much joy in working with people. But it's like how do you find the right chemistry? And so maybe one thing I'd say there is people that can build trust, that can scale trust, that underpins any kind of great collaboration. And so that's another maybe signal I'm always looking for is how fast can this person build trust with people and create that kind of environment, if that makes sense.
00:34:18 · Lenny Rachitsky, Josh Woodward
[00:34:18] S0: Yeah, these are so interesting. On that last one, is that kind of a growing, emerging, even more important skill you're finding with the rise of AI? And I'm curious why. [00:34:28] S1: I think so for a couple of reasons. I would say one maybe is uniquely Google. It's a larger organization, so you've got to be able to do that. But the ones that don't feel uniquely Google, one, it feels like as the execution costs of making products goes down, we'll be able to make more products, which you may make the same products with the same people, but I think there's a lot more, you probably see this too, is just people will team up with different people to make stuff. And so it's very interesting when we're thinking about almost like fielding a new team for a Labs project where you used to say it's about five to seven people. Now it's about two to three people, maybe four. But it's kind of like those people just almost... You can almost imagine super talented musicians who team up with different people and then they play different songs together, the songs are the products. But it's like those are the MVPs in Labs where you can be like, "Hey, drop this sort of PM," but that can also code and design because all the roles are blurring with other people and see how they jam on stuff together. So I think that's where my prediction is that skill will almost increase in importance because there will be more products and because there'll be more of this free agents kind of jamming on stuff together.
00:35:46 · Lenny Rachitsky
[00:35:46] S0: Along those lines, I imagine you have been pulling designers, engineers, NPMs into Labs and they all work together and sometimes different functions take leads. Has there been a shift in who you find is most impactful and successful in leading product ideas, Labs, teams in terms of the ratio of PM versus design versus eng? For example, are PMs becoming more valuable or eng becoming more valuable, something like that?
00:36:14 · Josh Woodward
[00:36:14] S1: Yeah, it's interesting. We've been studying this a lot and actually testing a lot of this too. I would say in general, PM happens to be the function maybe by nature because it's a bit more horizontal, that feels like it's maybe being able to adapt to some of the other functions faster. And we see this when we'll run little builder pilots across the company that comes back as like, oh yeah, that's maybe, I don't want to say it's easier, but maybe it's PMs are more accustomed to like, all right, I'm in this meeting, I got to simulate something as a lawyer or as a BD person or as a sales... Do you know what I mean? So I think in some way maybe there's some inherentness in who selects into that. So that definitely is true. But I would say our best people can come from any function. And I would also even widen it, Lenny, we're seeing strategy and ops people and PD people and marketing people be builders in Labs and they are really good. And I think maybe this is another overhyped, underhyped thing. I think right now people are maybe overhyping like everybody's a builder and it's just this new job function and everything's kind of the same. I actually feel like at least what we're seeing is that people still have their specialty. It's like their major or minor in college or something. And I feel like there's a risk if everybody becomes a builder that you lose a lot of respect and appreciation and obviously the expertise that comes from those specialties. And so I think when we set up teams, even though we may be like, this is more of a builder crew, we're still thinking about where are the specialties? And that ends up being super important as well.
00:37:58 · Lenny Rachitsky, Josh Woodward
[00:37:58] S0: I completely agree. Yeah, I like that. I like this metaphor of the major and minor. That's a really fun way to think about it. You can be better at building, but your PM skills are still the primary thing you're amazing at. [00:38:10] S1: Definitely. And I think that's the advice we give, especially to a lot of new PMs on the teams, like APMs or people earlier in their career is it's great you're vibe coding and you're making all these prototypes, but do that in service of becoming an exceptional, extraordinary PM and don't lose that major. That's what you need to hone, especially when you're early on. [00:38:30] S0: I love the way you described it where PMs are really good at simulating other functions, such an AI way of thinking about collaborating. And this idea of explosive endurance, someone tweeted this recently. They're like, "What's so called when it's both a marathon and a sprint?" [00:38:47] S1: It's that. It was like, "Talk to Roger Federer." Yeah. [00:38:51] S0: Yeah. I feel like everyone's in that right now. And that's just a constant theme and trend on this podcast and just in tech right now is just everyone's in this marathon plus sprint mode. [00:38:59] S1: Yes. Yeah. [00:39:00] S0: Man, I guess is there anything that you do to help people deal with that because it feels like it's nonstop?
00:39:06 · Josh Woodward
[00:39:06] S1: Yeah. I mean, one of the things we try to do, I mentioned a little bit earlier, but I can unpack it some, is we think of seasons in Labs and can we think about at any given point there's 20 or 30 experiment running simultaneously, but for each individual little team trying to create a little bit of milestones or a rhythm to the work. And there's sometimes it is just flat out full on. And maybe the best lesson I've learned as a leader is almost to sort of name that, declare that people opt in or opt out of that, but also be very clear when a team is not in that mode. And I think it's like how do you try to architect almost like a rhythm to the year where it's like, "Hey, we've got a big model coming. These five products are super important to showcase this model. We think this model will propel them." You five is like, "It is explosive time." Do you know what I mean? And so it's trying to create a common language around that, which is sometimes in a lot of ways PMs sometimes can be very effective if they can come up with what is the sort of shorthand or the common language. And so we actually put a lot of thought into that too of like, "All right, you all are on right now." Whereas after they go through that, we may be say after a Google IO, a lot of Labs teams will sprint. After IO, June is like, "Hey, just go hack, go rediscover what's new, just go build, have fun." And then it's so interesting, Lenny, because the instinct or the temptation is like, "Oh, man, it's June. It's unproductive. We're not shipping." And it's like, no, actually those are where all the new seeds are coming from for the next season. Do you know what I mean? And so it's trying to think through the rhythm of that is one way we try to do it. I don't think we always get it right though, by the way. And I think one of the things we're talking a lot on the team is, I guess in the past, people would talk about work-life balance and there were other ways this conversation got framed. I think why I like things like explosive endurance or concepts like that is we want to be doing this as a team for many, many years. And so it's like you can't just empty the tank in nine months and just kill yourself. So you have to have a view towards the long term, but also recognize the moment you're in is fast.