Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
01:15:13 · Fiona Fung, Lenny Rachitsky
[01:15:13] S1: You know actually what's really fun, one of my previous managers, he started software engineer when it was punch cards and it's so fabulous. He's been messaging me everything he's been building with Claude Code and I'm like, wow, what a career that you go from. He's really seeing this whole change. So maybe I think for us to think about is when I think about his career, how he got started with punch cards was also totally, totally different than now. I think it'll be interesting for us to see what remains important and then what changes in terms of importance and then it's like how do you gain... I have a theory, maybe that's what is important will shift over time. And then how do you build the proficiency in doing that? [01:16:03] S0: Yeah, just learn the things that really matter. The argument that I constantly hear is just like it's a new level of abstraction, just like assembly and binary. It just keeps going up and up. And now, okay, we don't need to actually look at the code. It's like a new layer of traction, prompts and Claude's thinking messages. [01:16:20] S1: Yeah. And it's maybe like, okay, what is an interesting problem and what's the prioritization for experience to build? It's interesting. Yeah. And then when you build things, how do you know it's actually resonating and it's doing what you intended?
01:16:20 · Fiona Fung, Lenny Rachitsky
[01:16:20] S1: Yeah. And it's maybe like, okay, what is an interesting problem and what's the prioritization for experience to build? It's interesting. Yeah. And then when you build things, how do you know it's actually resonating and it's doing what you intended? [01:16:34] S0: And it's good. Yeah. Are we just building a bunch of slop here or is this actually this architecture that will work? I think the advantage though for young people is it's so much easier to just lean in and work in this new way versus being stuck in the way that things used to be. It's rare. It's amazing how many longtime engineers like yourself have adapted and embraced this. It's like so hard to just change everything. Okay, let's do it. Everything.
01:16:34 · Lenny Rachitsky, Fiona Fung
[01:16:34] S0: And it's good. Yeah. Are we just building a bunch of slop here or is this actually this architecture that will work? I think the advantage though for young people is it's so much easier to just lean in and work in this new way versus being stuck in the way that things used to be. It's rare. It's amazing how many longtime engineers like yourself have adapted and embraced this. It's like so hard to just change everything. Okay, let's do it. Everything. [01:17:06] S1: Well, because the rate of change is also so fast. Actually, that was the one thing of, I remember the first time it was probably Sonnet 35 or 36 and I remembered it was still making some mistakes when I was doing things on the side. I'm like, "What are you doing?" And then what I noticed was some of the engineers that were resisting AI tooling, they're like, "Ah, but see, look at all of these." But then I think it was hard to understand of how the exponential rate of improvements. And maybe that's another interesting thing that I, myself, I'm learning too. There might've been something I tried to automate that Claude wasn't quite good enough. And then actually in the next model, oh, well, now it is good enough. So it's always also thinking about what may have not worked. It might be worth the time to revisit because that now might be a new capability.
01:17:06 · Fiona Fung, Lenny Rachitsky
[01:17:06] S1: Well, because the rate of change is also so fast. Actually, that was the one thing of, I remember the first time it was probably Sonnet 35 or 36 and I remembered it was still making some mistakes when I was doing things on the side. I'm like, "What are you doing?" And then what I noticed was some of the engineers that were resisting AI tooling, they're like, "Ah, but see, look at all of these." But then I think it was hard to understand of how the exponential rate of improvements. And maybe that's another interesting thing that I, myself, I'm learning too. There might've been something I tried to automate that Claude wasn't quite good enough. And then actually in the next model, oh, well, now it is good enough. So it's always also thinking about what may have not worked. It might be worth the time to revisit because that now might be a new capability. [01:17:50] S0: Yeah. That comes up a lot on this podcast. Just build something that is almost working that is at the edge because once the model gets there, you'll be so far ahead of everybody else. Okay. Final question. You may have already answered this with what you just said, but what keeps you up at night?
01:18:07 · Fiona Fung
[01:18:07] S1: The thing that keeps me up at night is probably... It's how we... So we talked about Claude Code and Cowork team culture and the team culture is really important to me. It's the one team mentality and I share with folks. And by the way, culture is like a living, breathing thing. It's not just a poster you slap on a wall and it changes over time and it shows up in how we treat each other, how we're there for each other. And so the culture of the team is important to me because we are growing and since the culture shifts, making sure that maintaining the things are important, that we still really... It's really important for me to have diverse perspectives so then we can have good, healthy, open, honest, debates out in the open and we welcome those and what I call that one team mentality that when you get close to the finish line, look behind you and see is there some teams to help because we finish as a team. That's probably the thing that keeps me up at night. There's so many other hard problems, right? But I think maybe a lot of the other ones are product or engineering challenges that yes, we have dashboards or theories or hypothesis, but the culture is like a human aspect that is... I think that's the one that I always want to make sure that we're as we grow, we're still maintaining that culture because it is the fiber of the team. And when it starts drifting... I'm always worried if it drifts, are we catching it and having conversations as a team together to make sure we're all wanting the culture to grow in the right direction?
01:19:49 · Lenny Rachitsky, Fiona Fung
[01:19:49] S0: Yeah. I imagine everybody is struggling with this considering the pace of change and the phase of hiring, just like... Especially at a company like Anthropic that's in this crazy, the most unprecedented growth trajectory in history. I could see how that could be a challenge with so much change. So it makes sense. Even at Airbnb when I was there, that was quite a growth trajectory and that was nothing like what you guys are going through and that was a constant topic of conversation. How do we maintain the culture? [01:20:19] S1: Actually, I'm curious, what was your experience at BAB to maintain the culture as we're growing?