Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
00:18:24 · Lenny Rachitsky
[00:18:24] S0: Amazing. I imagine everyone listening to this is going to be like, "We need Adam on our team ASAP." Unfortunately, you're locked in at a company. And so we're going to do our best to try to extract as much wisdom as we can in this conversation because you have a job. So this is great. So the three steps here that you walk through of how to approach hiring from this perspective, the way that executives are hired, this idea of going after top 1%. So step one was be very clear on what top percent looks like. So just to mirror back what you just shared, be clear on the skills you need and stack rank, here's the skills we need from this person, what experiences we're looking for and stack rank that. Talk about why this role is impactful and just why this is so important. Is there anything else there just to flesh that out?
00:19:10 · Adam Ward, Lenny Rachitsky
[00:19:10] S1: Those are the general buckets. Every company will have other specific things that really matter. But yeah, those would be the things. And remember, things you're not asking are what companies are they from? These are objective, somewhat transferable things versus trying to piggyback off of someone else's process or definition of great. Because we just said almost every company's doing this wrong or has company doing funnel doom. So why would we mirror or map someone else's process that we feel like maybe wasn't perfect? And your company is different, your product is different. And so you owe it to yourself to identify what does great look like for you and who's going to be successful in this role in this product versus what was successful for someone else in a process that maybe you don't have full confidence in any way. [00:20:01] S0: So you're saying specifically don't focus on, and it's a trap to focus on the logos on the resume. [00:20:06] S1: I think so. Yeah. There are clearly vintages of companies when you're like, "Hey, this team at this company at this time did fantastic things." And possibly because that person was on that team at that company at that time, they are great. Possibly. That can be shorthand, but both companies jump to that almost immediately. [00:20:30] S0: Awesome. Okay. Step two is mapping out and finding basically the top 50. What are tools that help you do that? Is it like LinkedIn? Is it something else?
00:20:30 · Lenny Rachitsky, Adam Ward
[00:20:30] S0: Awesome. Okay. Step two is mapping out and finding basically the top 50. What are tools that help you do that? Is it like LinkedIn? Is it something else? [00:20:38] S1: I think it's a combination of things, but I think where we typically start is a set of people who we trust in terms of having high taste in talent. But I think the mistake though, and that's an obvious point, but the mistake that most companies make is they'll say, "Hey, Lenny, who's the best product engineer you know?" That is the worst question you can ask. The better question to ask is, "Hey, Lenny, of all the product engineers you worked with, who stands out to you as the person who's most collaborative with designers or who can translate a framework into a product better than anyone you've ever seen?" You have to put these very specific characteristics or skills or needs for your team. And then that's way easier for you to conjure up people that way than this broad question of who's the best person. [00:21:36] S0: And I imagine that maps to step one, which is where you map the skills, experiences. [00:21:40] S1: Correct. So the questions you're asking are mapping back to that cornerstone work that you did in step one. So when you ask very targeted questions to a set of people, you actually start to triangulate around the same names. You're like, "Ah, Lenny mentioned them, but so did Sally. Let's put this person on the list, on the target list."
00:21:40 · Adam Ward, Lenny Rachitsky
[00:21:40] S1: Correct. So the questions you're asking are mapping back to that cornerstone work that you did in step one. So when you ask very targeted questions to a set of people, you actually start to triangulate around the same names. You're like, "Ah, Lenny mentioned them, but so did Sally. Let's put this person on the list, on the target list." [00:21:59] S0: Okay. So part of the strategy here is you talk to people you trust who are awesome, whose tastes you trust, ask them these questions. What else helps you find these people in the world? [00:22:09] S1: So if you think about, let's pull out the set of characteristics. Okay. The characteristics of someone we want is really curious, systems thinker, whatever they might be, maybe two or three things. Then you're thinking about what companies also share that approach to how they hire. And you could literally probably do a quick Boolean or AI String and be like, "Hey, look at all the job openings in the world among these 100 companies, which ones also say these characteristics matter?" So you kind of think about, "Ooh, where could they have maybe picked up some of these skills for a company who also said that matters as well?" And so then you start to build company lists that aren't the normal list you have, but they might show up there too, but let's validate it through the things that we objectively said we wanted for us.
00:22:09 · Adam Ward, Lenny Rachitsky
[00:22:09] S1: So if you think about, let's pull out the set of characteristics. Okay. The characteristics of someone we want is really curious, systems thinker, whatever they might be, maybe two or three things. Then you're thinking about what companies also share that approach to how they hire. And you could literally probably do a quick Boolean or AI String and be like, "Hey, look at all the job openings in the world among these 100 companies, which ones also say these characteristics matter?" So you kind of think about, "Ooh, where could they have maybe picked up some of these skills for a company who also said that matters as well?" And so then you start to build company lists that aren't the normal list you have, but they might show up there too, but let's validate it through the things that we objectively said we wanted for us. [00:22:59] S0: It's so interesting. Systems thinking has come up on the last four podcasts- Systems thinking has come up on the last four podcasts I've done. Such a trending up attribute people are looking for these days. [00:23:08] S1: Yeah, I think it's always been there in a little bit, but I think it's just become really accentuated now in this era. [00:23:15] S0: When you hear the term systems thinking, what's a way you describe what that actually means when people hear that term?
00:23:15 · Lenny Rachitsky, Adam Ward
[00:23:15] S0: When you hear the term systems thinking, what's a way you describe what that actually means when people hear that term? [00:23:21] S1: I learned this pretty early, maybe in the second company I worked for, and it comes around to a fundamental question of what problem are we trying to solve? And so when I think about systems thinking or when I'm sitting around, I'm like, "What is the fundamental root problem that we're trying to solve?" And then, "How do we take this larger problem and break into really small pieces?" And I've fortunately been working with engineers most of my life, and I just really have learned and I admired how they can take something that's really big and break it in and start to tackle that problem as long as you're anchored into what is the overall thing that we're trying to solve here. [00:23:57] S0: Awesome. Very helpful. People always hear these terms, they're like, "Yeah, yeah, I'm a great systems thinker." And so it's always helpful to just hear from different people what that actually means. [00:24:04] S1: I think systems thinking sounds very strategic, but actually I think it's extremely tactical. The very best systems thinkers take these things and put them into very small tactics and tactic by tactic, kind of remove the blocker. [00:24:20] S0: So to close the thread on this step of finding these incredible people, what I'm hearing is mostly it's sit around, talk to people and just jam in a doc probably of, "Here's people that people recommend. Here's companies to look at."