Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
01:28:27 · Lenny Rachitsky, Fiona Fung
[01:28:27] S0: That's very common across Anthropic people I have on the podcast. Tell me theme. [01:28:32] S1: But I will share with you what I always have downloaded on my phone so that if I'm on the airplane... So there's three movies that I'll always have on my phone because I think they're just so fun to watch if I have time. One is Emily. It's this French movie that, oh, my gosh, all of these movies are going to be very old, by the way. It's going to be like vintage movies, but I loved Emily, super whimsical. So really highly recommend it to anyone that haven't seen it. If you remember, I told you I was going on a... I thought I was going to be a visual artist. So when I was 16, my high school, we took a trip, a high school trip to Paris and I have so many memories of that and Emily really captures the magic I felt at Paris. And the other two are Ghibli films. I love Spirited Away. I just love that story. I just love everything about Spirited Away. It's probably one of my favorite Ghibli films. And then the third one is another Ghibli film, Nausicaä Valley of the Wind. And I think about this one quite a bit because if anyone asks me, "Hey, how did you think about all these leadership traits?" I think I watched that movie probably when I was eight or nine and the heroin Nausicaä and seeing how she leads just left such a thumbprint in my heart, I guess you could say, that probably Nausicaä has inspired me to a lot in a lot of my different leadership principles. [01:30:08] S0: Wow. What is that book called again?
01:30:08 · Lenny Rachitsky, Fiona Fung
[01:30:08] S0: Wow. What is that book called again? [01:30:11] S1: The movie's called Nausicaä Valley of the Wind, but it was actually based on a manga. [01:30:15] S0: Valley of the Wind. So it's like high output management and you grow Valley of the Wind, Nausicaä. [01:30:21] S1: That's right. [01:30:21] S0: Two top management books. So cool. Okay. Do you have a favorite product you've recently discovered that you really love? Could be an app, could be clothing, could be a gadget, could be kitchen equipment.
01:30:33 · Fiona Fung
[01:30:33] S1: I'll share the product that I'm reminded of how much has made a difference in my life recently because I've been just traveling a little bit and I like to travel really light so I use whatever shampoo and conditioner the hotel gives and I forgot that... So the product that I actually have one of their hand, I promise is it's not an infomercial, but Sweet Sisters Body Care, it's a local business on Whidbey Island, but the reason why their product has made such a big difference in my life, it's a full line of organic, hair, body, skincare. But a few years ago, I started getting this rash on my nose right here that was really painful, actually bleeding. And I could not for the life of me figure out how to stop it. I tried not using any lotions. I cut everything on my face and it was still really hurting. And then somebody says, "What's the shampoo you're using?" I'm like, "It's the same shampoo I've used since I was a teenager." And they're like, "Maybe your body has now..." And it's like generic brand shampoo they get anywhere. And they said, "May your bodies just start developing an allergy to it because of the chemicals in it that..." I'm like, "What?" And so anyways, this was an organic shampoo that I found. Lo and behold, I use our shampoo because you don't think that when you wash your hair, it actually then goes over to the rest of your body. So since then, I've switched everything that I used to be Sweet Sisters, but I'm recently reminded of how important this is because after a week of hotel shampoo, I actually started having some skin reactions again. I'm like, "Ah, maybe I should get travel size bottles that I could bring with me."
01:32:18 · Lenny Rachitsky, Fiona Fung
[01:32:18] S0: This is an awesome pick. I love local business picks, even big bonus points for that. And by the way, this travel you're doing, just for folks that may not know this, there's these Code with Claude events that are happening all over the world. I went to the one in SF, there's one in London, you're going to one in Tokyo. Is that the end of it or is there more after that? [01:32:36] S1: Tokyo is... So yeah, that's next week and that's the last leg of the trip. [01:32:42] S0: Okay. And then probably more in the future. So cool. I love that that's happening. Okay, two more questions. Do you have a favorite life motto that you find yourself coming back to often in work or in life? [01:32:51] S1: Ooh. So in work, I really love to remind folks, keep it simple. What is the thing that you're really trying to do well and focus on that? Keep it simple because I think sometimes we could overthink. So it's always a good mantra to think about that. And then in life, probably in a world where you can be anything, be kind. [01:33:14] S0: I love that one. We were at a Montessori school tour and that's what the teacher had up on the wall. [01:33:21] S1: We have so many things going on that you never know what's going on in someone else's life and that one small act of kindness can make the biggest difference. For me actually that was when... Do you remember COVID? We were all working from home during the COVID- [01:33:37] S0: How could I forget?
01:33:37 · Lenny Rachitsky, Fiona Fung
[01:33:37] S0: How could I forget? [01:33:40] S1: It's just always really struck with me because I was in these back to back meetings and one-on-ones are really important to me because actually that time is usually also really important for the other person. It's something that they've been looking to. They might have things discussed. I always really prioritize one-on-ones, but during that time, my grandmother wasn't doing well and she was in a home in Canada because of COVID I couldn't go visit and actually even my aunt and mom couldn't go visit and it was just very rare of if they have a helper that can help, we could do FaceTime, but you never know what time that is going to be because there's so many people that take care and all of a sudden I get a message from my aunt going, "Grandma can FaceTime at 12:00 PM today." I'm like, "Oh, no, there's this one-on-one that I've been mean to have." And I just messaged my report to say, "I'm really, really sorry. It's the last minute. Is it okay to..." And I know now when I say it doesn't seem like it's a big thing because it's like... But to me, it's always really important to keep. But he was like, "Yeah, totally. No problem at all." And for me, that was just a small after kindness and he totally didn't make it into big deal, but that made the biggest difference to me that I got to say hi to my grandmother on FaceTime.
01:34:56 · Lenny Rachitsky, Fiona Fung
[01:34:56] S0: I love that. Okay, final question. So Boris Cherny, when I asked him about you, when he had this interesting insight where he said in very important meetings, you can often hear Fiona, you can hear the click-clack of Fiona knitting in the background. Maybe talk about just what's going on there and what are a couple of things you knitted recently. [01:35:18] S1: Oh, my gosh. Well, I knitted this top recently. [01:35:22] S0: You make your own clothing. Unreal. This is very meta for Claude Code building itself. [01:35:31] S1: Actually, there's this whole fun thing I think between knitting and programming because it's like two stitches knit and a pearl. So zero and one. And anyway, so many concepts of stacks and queues you actually could... I'm kind of a compiler. I'm kind of generating an executable when I knit. Yeah, actually it was my grandma that taught me to knit when I was eight. I mentioned her and I going to that yarn shop. And so every time I knit, I think of her, but I always like to multitask as you could see like, yeah, kick off multiple agents. And so anytime I'm sitting and because I practice enough and got proficient at it, I don't have to look at what I'm doing. So it's almost like how you know sometimes people have like fidget spinners and such. Knitting is just... So anytime I'm sitting still, I'm like, "Oh, this is time to generate more knitting executable." Because I got so much yarn that if I don't do this, I might have a slight yarn addiction problem.