Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
00:29:45 · Lenny Rachitsky
[00:29:45] S1: Just watching how quickly AI took over coding, which, I think a year ago, definitely two years ago, most people are like, "I don't think so. I don't think AI will get this good." And that the best engineers in the world trusted so much, they're not even looking at the code anymore. That's where we've gone. It just made me reevaluate all these assumptions I've had about, okay, AI will never be as good as really good PMs, designers, at judging what is great and deciding what to build. But I'm just starting to think, I think it will get there. Even an example you've shared, it could give these two people trying to make a decision, "Here's all of the data you need to make a decision and here's why this is the right answer and just press yes, press one, and I'll go ahead and build this." So I think to your point, I think we undervalue just how good it'll get at this stuff. Okay. So your sense is it'll get better, but your sense is we'll still need awesome designers to be involved, us and PMs, to help make these decisions, engineers, of course?
00:30:46 · Jenny Wen, Lenny Rachitsky
[00:30:46] S0: Yeah. Yeah. I think someone will still have to decide, oh, we want to build this kind of product. Or given what the AI is presenting us, someone still needs to be accountable for the decision. The same way that even though Claude can write all this code for you today, it is still an engineer who's accountable for, does that code actually work? Does this actually make sense in the product? So I think there's that decision making/judgment layer, which feels like maybe one day will come when we won't have to do that, but it still falls on us. Yeah. [00:31:18] S1: It doesn't make sense. It makes me think about the radiology example, where there's always the sense that AI is going to take over that field of radiology and tell you what is going on. But the human is mostly useful for signing off on the decision, because someone needs to be liable if they're wrong. Which isn't the best job in the world, but that's a different game as [inaudible 00:31:38] code. [00:31:38] S0: Yeah. [00:31:39] S1: Okay. Another ongoing question in AI and design is just, it feels like chatbots and terminals are just like, I don't think anyone expected this to be the lasting user interface to AI. Chatbots, okay, no, no, this is just a temporary stop along the journey, but now it's gone even further, and just terminals. Do you have thoughts on just, I don't know, do you think there will be a next step of how we interface with AI, or do you think chatbots and terminals are mostly where we end up?
00:32:08 · Jenny Wen
[00:32:08] S0: There will likely be a combination of both, both UIs and interfaces that you are interacting with, clicking with, and that feel more tactile., We are already seeing this and playing with this within Claude, the chatbot. So we recently released a bunch of these widgets that let Claude elicit and ask you questions, and also show you things like the weather and stocks and whatnot in interactive ways. And I think those have had a really good reception, because people still like to see UIs and touch them and click them, and they are much more efficient than typing something to Claude. But at the same time, when we really leaned into this chatbot paradigm, I think that just gave us this whole world of flexibility that we didn't get with these sort of baked-in UIs. So my read here is I don't think Chat is ever going away because this opened up this new way of infinite ways to work with the model, and to talk to the computer, that we just didn't have before. But I think that it will still be most direct for very specific things to exist in this UI. And I think that what will probably happen here, is that a lot of those UIs will be generated more and more often by the models, as opposed to something that we're hand coding each instance. But I think we're in this space where I don't think chat ... And maybe even talking to the terminal is going to go away.
00:33:41 · Lenny Rachitsky, Jenny Wen
[00:33:41] S1: It's interesting that with OpenClaw, Claude, Moltbot, all the names, one of the big innovations is another way to chat with it through WhatsApp and Telegram and SMS, just like another form of chatbot, but just like, that was a big [inaudible 00:33:54]. Oh, I could just chat with it through WhatsApp. [00:33:55] S0: Yeah. And it's like chatting and talking to someone is still ... We as humans are doing it, and it's a way for us to interact in a really rich way. And now we just have this other medium to interact with a computer, basically. [00:34:11] S1: Yeah. So Kevin Weil, who works at another AI lab I won't mention, he had this great point on the podcast that talking is such a beautiful way to handle every level of intelligence. We can talk to people that are very, very smart and not so smart and it's talking, and it scales so well across the spectrum. We can talk to people at 200 IQ, 300, like its talking still works. So that's why it's been this beautiful way to deal with the growing intelligence of models as it continues to work.
00:34:42 · Jenny Wen
[00:34:42] S0: Yeah, that totally makes sense. Yeah. Yeah, I have takes on this. Yeah. So this past year at Anthropic, I joined as an IC at first, and then I managed a team for a few months in an org structure that sort of needed it, and now I'm actually back to doing full-time IC work. And I joined Anthropic as an IC because I was just really excited about the kind of work that there was to be done as an IC here, but also because I was feeling like I sort of want to be closer to the work, and I think this feels like a really important time to do it, before I ascend the corporate ranks. And I was having these questions and doubts about, is middle management, is that safe in the future? Is the way that we're working actually, is this going to be a job that persists in the future? Or should I try something else and get my hands dirty kind of thing? And to be totally fair, I actually love both sides of the coin. I love managing people. I love setting up teams and being at that level, but I also just really love IC work. I was sort of a reluctant manager when I did it, and I was like, "Okay, I'll do it." So I love both sides of the coin pretty equally. But I think actually what being an IC across this past year has taught me, is that it actually just gave me a lot of skills that I don't think I would've gained if I was just managing throughout this year. Like I mentioned, the design process has changed so, so much in this past year, and I feel like I've just picked up so many hard skills that I wouldn't have necessarily had the time to do if I was just managing a team. So that's actually the best thing it's afforded me. And I think at any point if I'm managing a team again, I think it will give me the empathy and understanding of how the design process has changed. And I think that's actually a really important thing right now because the teams are working so differently. And I think it's actually pretty hard to empathize if you are not working in that way, or you're not always testing all the tools and trying stuff. But yeah, it's an interesting time to be a designer. And if I had not worked in this environment, I don't know if I would've totally understood it or knew what to do or how to guide my teams. So that's sort of what this year really gave me.
00:38:05 · Lenny Rachitsky, Jenny Wen
[00:38:05] S1: And so you were previously a director of design at Figma, right? [00:38:06] S0: Yeah. [00:38:08] S1: How big was your team? How large was your org, just to give people a reference? [00:38:13] S0: At the max, I probably had, I think, 12, 15 designers or so, and I had a few managers as well. [00:38:21] S1: Cool. And then you went back to an IC? [00:38:21] S0: It was like an org. [00:38:23] S1: Yeah. Okay. So you had the sense that middle management might not last. What's your current feeling? Do you think design management is a thing that persists long-term, or do you think everyone turns into IC? [00:38:34] S0: I think as long as there is a team of people, it helps to have somebody who is managing a team. I think there's real value in managers. It depends what the shape of the manager is and what they actually do. But the way I think about what a helpful manager is these days, is somebody who is not just, I think pure people management like, oh, just somebody to set you up, help you in your career, have one-on-ones, make sure you're feeling good at work. I think that that is not a thing as much anymore, but I think somebody who can really function as giving the team direction, as well as doing some of the people management stuff, that tied together, I think is the future of what managing looks like, at least for now. Somebody who can really engage with the team in terms of the work and giving direction there, as well as creating the environment for them to do their best work. [00:39:26] S1: And do you see yourself going back into management long-term?