Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
01:08:38 · Jenny Wen, Lenny Rachitsky
[01:08:38] S0: Think a little bit about the archetypes that I mentioned, especially the strong generalists and the deep specialists. Those folks we're really excited about. But generally folks who are- [01:08:39] S1: The block and the deep T. [01:08:52] S0: The block and the deep T. What could we be talking about? Yeah, folks who feel like those archetypes resonate with them, but also folks that are just really excited about the technology, have been building a lot, and sort of want to be on the frontier. [01:09:10] S1: Amazing. Well, with that, we've reached our very exciting lightning round. I've got five questions for you. Jenny, are you ready. [01:09:17] S0: All right. I'm ready. [01:09:18] S1: Here we go. What are two or three books that you find yourself recommending most to other people?
01:09:18 · Lenny Rachitsky, Jenny Wen
[01:09:18] S1: Here we go. What are two or three books that you find yourself recommending most to other people? [01:09:23] S0: The first one is The Power Broker by Robert Caro, which is an incredibly aggressive recommendation, given that it's like 1100 pages. But I think, in this era, when our attention spans are so short, I think this is actually worth reading end to end, because I think there are very few collections or memoirs where it spans through someone's entire life, and you sort of see how somebody changes throughout those decades. And it's also somebody who's really controversial too. And it's nice to read a really nuanced view of somebody, Robert Moses. And I think we just lose out on some of this long arc thinking, because we're thinking so much about right now. So it's just an important reminder that careers are long, and is also really good for understanding how somebody just gets things done really well. So Power Broker. The second one that I recommend to a lot of people is a book called Insomniac City, which is written by Bill Hayes, who was the partner of the scientist, Oliver Sacks, around the time that Oliver Sacks died. And it's just this really beautiful, ethereal memoir of Oliver Sacks' last days, and their sort of love story. I think this has very little to do with the stuff on your podcast, Lenny, but it's just a book that I really love, and just makes you think about mortality, but also love and life and stuff like that. So that's one of my favorite books.
01:09:23 · Jenny Wen, Lenny Rachitsky
[01:09:23] S0: The first one is The Power Broker by Robert Caro, which is an incredibly aggressive recommendation, given that it's like 1100 pages. But I think, in this era, when our attention spans are so short, I think this is actually worth reading end to end, because I think there are very few collections or memoirs where it spans through someone's entire life, and you sort of see how somebody changes throughout those decades. And it's also somebody who's really controversial too. And it's nice to read a really nuanced view of somebody, Robert Moses. And I think we just lose out on some of this long arc thinking, because we're thinking so much about right now. So it's just an important reminder that careers are long, and is also really good for understanding how somebody just gets things done really well. So Power Broker. The second one that I recommend to a lot of people is a book called Insomniac City, which is written by Bill Hayes, who was the partner of the scientist, Oliver Sacks, around the time that Oliver Sacks died. And it's just this really beautiful, ethereal memoir of Oliver Sacks' last days, and their sort of love story. I think this has very little to do with the stuff on your podcast, Lenny, but it's just a book that I really love, and just makes you think about mortality, but also love and life and stuff like that. So that's one of my favorite books. [01:10:54] S1: My goal here is, we're trying to create Renaissance humans, so all of this other stuff is excellent. [01:11:01] S0: Cool.
01:11:01 · Jenny Wen, Lenny Rachitsky
[01:11:01] S0: Cool. [01:11:02] S1: Interestingly, I saw Julie Zhuo, famed design leader, was reading The Power Broker recently. I don't know what's going on over here. Spreading in design land. Okay. Do you have a favorite recent movie or TV show that you really enjoyed? [01:11:16] S0: I watched A Sentimental Value recently. I watched it on a plane, which is how directors want you to watch their films, but it's a Norwegian film by the same director who did The Worst Person in the World. I think just the pacing, the writing, the relationship between the characters is just really subtle and beautiful. It's basically about this family, sort of a family drama, but also about this house that they lived in their entire lives. It's beautiful because the house is sort of a character. So I don't know what else to say about that, but that was a really good movie. And then I would also recommend obviously The Pitt, season two. We're on that. I think everybody just likes to watch people who are really competent at their jobs do something. So yeah. [01:12:00] S1: Imagine being an actor on that show, just like how much you have to learn and memorize all these terms. [01:12:05] S0: Yeah. Yeah. It just also seems really fast paced too. They do so much stuff in one shot, and there's just so much movement and stuff like that. It seems really, really hard to be an actor on.
01:12:05 · Jenny Wen, Lenny Rachitsky
[01:12:05] S0: Yeah. Yeah. It just also seems really fast paced too. They do so much stuff in one shot, and there's just so much movement and stuff like that. It seems really, really hard to be an actor on. [01:12:15] S1: And I only recently realized Noah Wyle was in ER as a younger person, and now he's the head of this. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, man. Okay. Favorite product you recently discovered that you really love, cannot be Cowork? [01:12:26] S0: Not one that I've actually discovered recently, but Retro, I've been using it for basically two years now since it came out. And I think I discovered new benefits of it recently. So for folks who don't know about Retro, it's sort of this small community photo sharing app, in which you can only share photos from each week, from a given week as opposed to all time. And it basically has none of the social media stuff. You can't really see counts, there's no ads, et cetera. But one really nice thing is now that I've been using it for two years, I can now look back at each year and see, oh yeah, this week, two years ago, I was doing this, and it's become this really special way to live through each week of my life, basically. [01:13:14] S1: Wow. And it's also a beautifully crafted app if you're looking for building your own taste in design. [01:13:20] S0: Yeah. Designers love Retro. [01:13:23] S1: I could see that. Okay. Do you have a favorite life motto that you often come back to in work or in life? [01:13:28] S0: Yeah. Not sure if it's my favorite life motto, but one thing I do catch myself saying a lot is just, "It is what it is."
01:13:28 · Jenny Wen, Lenny Rachitsky
[01:13:28] S0: Yeah. Not sure if it's my favorite life motto, but one thing I do catch myself saying a lot is just, "It is what it is." [01:13:36] S1: My dad says that all the time. I love it. [01:13:37] S0: Yeah. [01:13:37] S1: Yeah. [01:13:40] S0: It sounds super defeatist, but I promise it's not. I think just given how much stuff is going on in the world right now, and especially with the industry and whatnot, you can't control everything. And so sometimes it is what it is, just brings the levity you need to move forward. [01:13:55] S1: I did a 10-day meditation retreat a while ago, and I came back from it and it's like, "Dad, you've been right all along. This is the answer to it all. It is what it is." Don't cling, don't try to change. Just it is what it is. [01:14:08] S0: It is what it is. [01:14:10] S1: There's so much depth then. I was like, okay, smarter than I even thought. Okay. Final question. Coming back to cowork, is there, I don't know, mind-blowing use case, something just like, wow, that's so cool that cowork can do that. Either something you use it for, or you've heard somebody using it for?