Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
01:17:01 · Dianne Penn
[01:17:01] S0: In 2024, we shipped four models in the whole year or four series of models. And I think we did more than that volume in just Q2 of this year. I think I've been really lucky with the team that we've grown and built, both the stakeholders on the research side and within our research product management team. I think that one of the magical parts about approaching all of this is that it's not an individual sport. There's a sense of radical ownership and team collaboration that, I think sometimes it does feel like a high performance sport because you're in very critical decisions. There's new information about users, about training, and you have to make recommendations and judgments and decisions very quickly. And nobody can do that sustainably by themselves. And so I think what's really helped is having a team that is incredible, who looks out for each other, who the night before a launch, even if they're not the core DRI on that model, will stay up and help the DRI to review the blog post and make edits and come up with better demos and knowing to be each other's extra hand. I think it's very easy, if you take all of this change on your own shoulders, to feel like you're alone and to feel like you have to do everything. But I think one of the magical parts of Anthropic is this ability for us to figure out what are those opportunities to help each other and actually then taking the next smile of mind melding. We called it entering the hive mind. There was an article about this. And I think part of that is just that allows the team to replenish. I was just on PTO in June. It's not just that you can take PTO and you come back to 3X the amount of things to do. It's actually that you can take PTO and know the team can figure out the right things to do and that we individually can watch out for each other. So I think that's a big part. I'm really lucky, just personally. Also, my partner is really supportive. This is year six of me working in AI, so Amazon and then Anthropic. And so he sees how much I just love the technology and what this can do. And that really helps, I think, also from a personal perspective as well.
01:19:45 · Lenny Rachitsky, Dianne Penn
[01:19:45] S1: I love how many of these answers connect. So what I'm hearing here is just working with other people, relying on other people, helping each other out when things get crazy, which is a similar answer you had for just how to find the joy and fun in this work. Just be inspired by other people, see what they're doing, work together. [01:20:06] S0: Yeah. [01:20:08] S1: And it's interesting, when Fiona was on the podcast recently, I was asking her just what's changed in the world of software engineering? And she pointed out it's a lot lonelier now because now we're working with agents instead of other humans. Teams are smaller. People are having all these fleets they're talking to constantly. And so this is just a reminder of just the power of just actual other humans around you.
01:20:08 · Lenny Rachitsky, Dianne Penn
[01:20:08] S1: And it's interesting, when Fiona was on the podcast recently, I was asking her just what's changed in the world of software engineering? And she pointed out it's a lot lonelier now because now we're working with agents instead of other humans. Teams are smaller. People are having all these fleets they're talking to constantly. And so this is just a reminder of just the power of just actual other humans around you. [01:20:26] S0: We're asked to work and make decisions on really big things because you have more scale from the technology. And I think having individuals, having other folks more who can have some level of mind meld with what you work on, how you approach, maybe not exactly every detail, but what are their first principles? What are the assumptions you make? Then helps them back up for you or push your decision and sharpen your thinking. So I think I really try to look for that when building the team, growing the team, hiring. Is this person going to care about their own ego and building out a big org or are they going to care about contributing to Anthropic and contributing to the impact of the team and orienting towards folks who are low ego, team-oriented? I think it's a big part of the sustainability.
01:20:26 · Dianne Penn, Lenny Rachitsky
[01:20:26] S0: We're asked to work and make decisions on really big things because you have more scale from the technology. And I think having individuals, having other folks more who can have some level of mind meld with what you work on, how you approach, maybe not exactly every detail, but what are their first principles? What are the assumptions you make? Then helps them back up for you or push your decision and sharpen your thinking. So I think I really try to look for that when building the team, growing the team, hiring. Is this person going to care about their own ego and building out a big org or are they going to care about contributing to Anthropic and contributing to the impact of the team and orienting towards folks who are low ego, team-oriented? I think it's a big part of the sustainability. [01:21:30] S1: Yeah. A lot of it always just comes down back to culture and hiring. And I know I've heard a lot, just the reason Anthropic is able to move so fast. I remember that moment when something shipped every day of the month. There's a calendar of launches and people were talking about how is this possible? And what I heard a lot is just because everyone is so aligned around the mission and the values, it allows people to make decisions really quickly. Before we get to our very exciting lightning round, is there anything else, Dianne, that you wanted to share? Anything else you wanted to touch on? Anything you want to maybe double down on of things we've talked about?
01:21:30 · Lenny Rachitsky, Dianne Penn
[01:21:30] S1: Yeah. A lot of it always just comes down back to culture and hiring. And I know I've heard a lot, just the reason Anthropic is able to move so fast. I remember that moment when something shipped every day of the month. There's a calendar of launches and people were talking about how is this possible? And what I heard a lot is just because everyone is so aligned around the mission and the values, it allows people to make decisions really quickly. Before we get to our very exciting lightning round, is there anything else, Dianne, that you wanted to share? Anything else you wanted to touch on? Anything you want to maybe double down on of things we've talked about? [01:22:04] S0: This was actually really fun because I feel like your questions actually sharpened some of my thinking around how the thoughts connect. [01:22:10] S1: I'm your real human Claude over here.
01:22:10 · Lenny Rachitsky, Dianne Penn
[01:22:10] S1: I'm your real human Claude over here. [01:22:13] S0: One thing that I really want to convey or have people take away is I think one, in the ways of working, but also just two, this is a lot of growth and change and having the joy in using this technology. And if you're feeling like in this moment, you don't have as much of that feeling of initial joy, how do you find people who do, if this is an area that you're excited and want to work on? And I think developing skillsets, replenishing skillsets in many ways of things like thinking from a first principles' manner about what you solve. I think fundamentally, you didn't ask me this, but there is this question in the community of do we still need PMs when the models are so capable, when engineers are leaning in? I think the role of people who are user-centric, who go into the details of understanding what users are trying to accomplish, bubbling that up in an actionable manner and doing the relentless work to do that, that, to me, is a core of a product person. And I actually think we need more of that. I think we are becoming very technology layered-driven. And actually to make that impactful, you have to go deep, you have to be curious, you have to be super hands-on. And those are things that are also traits that have, I think, helped Anthropic from a product development and model development perspective and as part of the culture. And hopefully that's valuable for others as well.