Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
01:13:25 · Nikhyl Singhal
[01:13:25] S1: Yeah. And I think that if you dissect what alignment looks like, a lot of alignment was getting people the right information, the ground-level truth. That problem is dramatically better. And that part of the job, frankly, just absolutely sucked. Whether it was the status report or... I was on projects where there was docs that were sent to me, and then I would change the doc to then send it to my boss, and then that boss would send it to... and it was just this movement of information where the ground truth was buried in some part of the organization, and then there were all these people that were putting on their spin. That, I think, is changing. But to your point, now someone has to decide, and someone has to have an opinion on what to fight for. And that conversation is now much clearer to have. Because you know the ground truth, there's less spin. The CEO can literally ask their agent, "Well, what is the situation? How is this performing? What does this customer really want? How does this affect the system? Is this really something that we want to change the product to enable?" So that conversation can happen, but now people can fight it out with real credence. And if you're a product person that really does have an opinion and wants to make a point, you have a forum. So alignment won't go away. It's not going to have as much theatrics. And I think a lot of companies that are larger do have theatrics that I think AIs are going to remove. And I don't know of many PMs, there's some that lived for the theatrics, but frankly, most of them were like, "This just seems like a fricking waste of time." I mean, it's so telling that 80%, I bet you, this is a statement, 80%, if you truly ask your PM, "Do you really want that boss's boss job, or do you want their day? Not the pay, not the credibility, not the stature, but do you want their back-to-back meetings?" I bet you most of them will say no. And what I'm suggesting to you is that answer is going to change in the next two years.
01:15:35 · Lenny Rachitsky, Nikhyl Singhal
[01:15:35] S0: What's really also interesting is, as much as this role is changing, engineering is changing even more. And what I feel like is that the engineers that will continue to thrive are basically going to become more PM-y, because the coding part is now going to be solved. And now it's just, "What should we build? Is this great? Is this the direction we want to go? What does success look like?" So if you're like, " Oh shit, my job is changing," just imagine being an engineer right now and how crazy that must feel. [01:16:05] S1: Yeah. And I think the one advantage that engineers have is they think in systems, and they think about obsolescence more effectively. So I think that when you make a change, you have to decide, is this change going to be sustainable in the product that you're offering? I think an engineer has an edge there. I think the other edge they have is, "I bet you we can build this to be more automated, to be simpler." I think those things- [01:16:29] S0: And the minority goes there. Yeah.
01:16:29 · Lenny Rachitsky, Nikhyl Singhal
[01:16:29] S0: And the minority goes there. Yeah. [01:16:30] S1: Yeah. So I think that every one of us, the product person probably has a little bit of an edge in judgment and communication. The engineer's going to have a little bit of edge in the system scaling and how does this change affect folks? The designer's going to have a little bit of an edge with taste. And all of these things will still remain important. And obviously people that have all of these will do better than those that have one or two, but the industry's more than safe, as evidenced by your report that there's more hiring. And I think it's going to grow. It's just different class of individual. This is what we're trying to communicate. [01:17:05] S0: The design piece is really surprising to me. The fact that this data show that the number of design roles is plateauing, and just how teams are just not valuing design as much as you think. You would think that design becomes much more important as the number of products grows exponentially, that it's a way to stand out, to build something really beautiful, and have a really thought-through experience. And it's interesting that that's not happening right now. Also, just... I've been thinking about, there's no world where I'm a great designer. I can't just use AI and become a great designer. Unlike an engineer, maybe a PM, I could become a much better PM with AI. AI is knocking; it will do some cool stuff, but I'm not ever going to feel like I am a great designer now. So it's really interesting that design isn't more successful right now with the rise of AI.
01:17:59 · Nikhyl Singhal, Lenny Rachitsky
[01:17:59] S1: And it might be that we just don't know what to make of design in this era. That might be a piece of it. The other piece might be just like there's product builders and then product information movers, and they're split up. I think that there are pixel generators and then there are tastemakers. And I worry that in design, maybe the industry itself conflates design with more production and not with taste. And so I think there's a lot of companies that you would talk to, and even when they were hiring head of design, they were thinking more around, "We need more production." And great designers are much more tastemakers. And I think that is probably... that bias is entering into the hiring plans in this era that we have today. [01:18:50] S0: What a wild time we're living through, Nikhyl. Holy moly. [01:18:54] S1: Yeah, isn't it funny that neither of us are operational? There are days when I'm like, "Man, am I so happy I have the time to work on this." And then other days that I think this is some of the most interesting... being operational right now is quite a ride. And so there's good and bad. And COVID wasn't easy. There was a lot of challenges around working and seeing so much change. So there's always something, but this one's... everything's being questioned, including how you define joy, which I think is just absolutely fascinating.
01:18:54 · Nikhyl Singhal, Lenny Rachitsky
[01:18:54] S1: Yeah, isn't it funny that neither of us are operational? There are days when I'm like, "Man, am I so happy I have the time to work on this." And then other days that I think this is some of the most interesting... being operational right now is quite a ride. And so there's good and bad. And COVID wasn't easy. There was a lot of challenges around working and seeing so much change. So there's always something, but this one's... everything's being questioned, including how you define joy, which I think is just absolutely fascinating. [01:19:29] S0: Chaos is a ladder, as Littlefinger famously said. Nikhyl, is there anything that we haven't covered? Anything else that you think is important for people to hear? Any other advice, anything you want to double down on before we wrap up and get to our very exciting lightning round?
01:19:29 · Lenny Rachitsky, Nikhyl Singhal
[01:19:29] S0: Chaos is a ladder, as Littlefinger famously said. Nikhyl, is there anything that we haven't covered? Anything else that you think is important for people to hear? Any other advice, anything you want to double down on before we wrap up and get to our very exciting lightning round? [01:19:45] S1: I would just say that there's a lot of room to be optimistic right now, but you have to find it within yourself to recognize that there is a small period of change and exhaustion that's required to find that moment of joy. And I just urge everyone to find those reserves to get there, because once you do, it's infectious, but the longer you wait, the harder it is to cross that chasm. And so I really want people to feel optimistic and find that moment of joy, but I also recognize that there is a lot of activation energy that it takes to get there. And so my hope is that you've... and there's a lot of people going through it. And so there's some safety in numbers here, but definitely I urge everyone to try their hand at rethinking their craft. [01:20:39] S0: And just to be clear, you are seeing many people in the community doing well, enjoying this, thriving, this is possible. [01:20:48] S1: Yeah, it's smiling exhaustion I see in my community. And before it was just exhaustion. So I take smiling exhaustion over exhaustion, but the pace is relentless. I don't have any... There's nothing I can say to sugarcoat that point.