Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
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?
01:20:19 · Fiona Fung, Lenny Rachitsky
[01:20:19] S1: Actually, I'm curious, what was your experience at BAB to maintain the culture as we're growing? [01:20:24] S0: There's a couple of things. One is just what worked well is the founders being obsessed with it. Every all hands, every big meeting is just reminding of the culture and the value of the culture and what the values are. Just the founders top down being obsessed with it was a big part of it. You just couldn't have a meeting without that coming up as a thing. The other is a memory I always come back to is we had Sheryl Sandberg's Meta come do a fireside chat and somebody asked her just, how do you maintain culture as you scale? Because we're just growing so fast and it's so hard to deal with all this change and culture and all these new people. And her advice was, "This is actually a problem you want to have because this means you're growing and doing well and this is normal versus nothing will change if you're doing badly." That's a much worse situation when you're not growing and you're not hiring like crazy. That's a much worse situation that will cause even more pain and suffering. So this is a good problem you're dealing with is her advice, which has always stuck with me.
01:21:32 · Fiona Fung
[01:21:32] S1: Oh, that's great. It's interesting hearing you talk, I think one of the important things to Claude Code and Cowork team is whether ICs or managers, but this is a thing I especially as for managers on the team is really important that we all talk about for sure what's going out, but also just be open about what's not going well because then if we can actually have a conversation of what's not going well, that's how we can actually go ahead and address it. Speaking of what keeps me up in that, my nightmare is, especially if someone's in a manager position and I'm like, "Hey, how are things going? Everything's fine." I'm like, "Oh, my gosh, I'm not doing fine. I know this thing's..." You know how there was this meme of the dog drinking a cup of coffee in a room that's on fire? That is my nightmare. So that's actually a discussion I have with a lot of folks on the team by special managers, especially when they first join up, "Hey, let's always have these open conversations so that we can solve problems together."