Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
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?
01:14:10 · Lenny Rachitsky, Jenny Wen
[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? [01:14:28] S0: One thing I really like is just introspection. And so I have this folder, basically, of local notes that I have that I use iA Writer for. And I basically just write whatever, and over the years have collected it with a bunch of different notes, and they span all different things like one-on-one notes, random thoughts, tiny memos, interview notes, et cetera. And my favorite, it's cool to me, is just using cowork to analyze that and have insights out of it, and actually create things out of it. So anytime I can learn something new about myself, I love that. But I think a very practical thing I did with it the other day was along the lines of hiring, I was like, "Oh yeah, I want to sort of articulate what it is that I look for when I look for in design craft," because I think actually a lot of people struggle to articulate that. And I just had it read through all of my notes, both interview notes and other things that I cared about, and memos and stuff like that I've written in the past. And then it made me this rubric for evaluating that. So that kind of introspection where it's like, oh, I wouldn't have realized even these things about myself that I'd been putting out there implicitly. That's been really cool for me.
01:15:43 · Lenny Rachitsky, Jenny Wen
[01:15:43] S1: That is so cool. So just to make this very clear for people, you have a folder with all these things you've written, one-on-ones, meetings, like you could do, I don't know if y'all are allowed to use Granola or something like that, meeting transcripts, and ask it. And I was going to ask what prompt you used, but it's just like, "Read all these things I've written, and help me probably just understand how I feel about what is DesignCraft." [01:16:06] S0: Yeah, basically I think it was like, "Hey, I have a bunch of interview notes and a bunch of notes related to DesignCraft in this folder. Read it and then help me craft a memo/rubric for how I assess craft in interviews." [01:16:20] S1: So cool. [01:16:21] S0: Yeah. [01:16:22] S1: Jenny, this was awesome. What a time to be alive. [01:16:25] S0: What a time. [01:16:27] S1: Two final questions. Where can folks find you online if they want to reach out and how can listeners be useful to you? [01:16:31] S0: Yeah, I'm on Twitter/X is what we're calling it these days. It's @jenny_1. That's probably the best place, not really on LinkedIn as much, so that's the best place. And how can folks be helpful to me? Send us your product feedback. We're working on Cowork, or anything Claude related really, just send us your feedback, we'd love to make it better for you. [01:16:53] S1: Jenny, thank you so much for being here. [01:16:55] S0: Yeah, of course. It was great chatting Lenny.
01:16:55 · Jenny Wen, Lenny Rachitsky
[01:16:55] S0: Yeah, of course. It was great chatting Lenny. [01:16:58] S1: It was wonderful. Jenny, thank you. Bye everyone. Thank you so much for listening. If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Also, please consider giving us a rating or leaving a review, as that really helps other listeners find the podcast. You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at lennyspodcast.com. See you in the next episode.