Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
00:33:08 · Noam Segal
[00:33:08] S0: There's a strong narrative right now that there's never been a better time to be a founder. You're a lot less reliant on other people to build. There's a ton of conversations around the solopreneur or the duopreneur. There's a ton of conversations around how this is the era to be a founder. And yet people who are currently in that role aren't very excited about recommending it to other people. There's also another layer to this, which is as you go down in seniority, you are less likely to recommend your role. So execs, VPs, maybe even directors are more likely to recommend their role than people who are ICs. That's an interesting one, I've seen all sorts of explanations for that. One explanation, for example, is that at the top of the pyramid, VPs are benefiting more from AI because they're getting all of this stream of information and knowledge being processed by AI, making their jobs a lot easier, whereas ICs are each scrambling to build all of these micro SaaS products within the companies they work for. No one knows what anyone else is doing. There's a lot of duplicative work. It's a lot easier to build products these days, but a lot harder to maintain them. And so I think a lot of ICs are feeling like, there's a saying, full gas on neutral. You are pushing the pedal to the metal in your car, but you're in neutral gear, you're not going anywhere. I think that's the feeling that a lot of ICs are having these days with these technologies. I keep building these things, but I'm not having the impact I want. Everyone else is building too. There's lots of confusion, and it's just not worth it anymore.
00:35:13 · Lenny Rachitsky, Noam Segal
[00:35:13] S1: There's this interesting also trend, there's this whole meme of don't become part of the permanent underclass. And I feel like there's a few of these threads throughout this. And here it's like, "Okay, I'm a PM, but it's too late. Don't do this. The door is closing for this role. Things are changing." And it's not just PM, it's every role. Everyone's just like, "Maybe should do something else." [00:35:36] S0: Yeah, I would agree with that, and I think it's unfortunate. I feel like in the past, people were pushed to CS to learn to code. I know that these days, for myself as a parent, I don't know what to tell my kids to do anymore. I'm not sure what roles will be there for them in just a few years. These are very confusing times, and I think tech employees are feeling that as well. They don't understand what's in line for them in the future, so we certainly don't know to recommend to others like, "Yeah, in five years, it's going to be great." [00:36:21] S1: Get into plastics. It's like no one knows. It's just zoom out for a moment. It's so insane how much change we're living through right now. This is not a result we would've seen a year or two ago. This is so unstable and uncertain, and this is very new for people in tech, I think. [00:36:45] S0: Yeah. I like to use certain metaphors or examples from other areas in my life to explain these things, so I believe you spoke in the past to Scott Wu, the Co-Founder and CEO of Cognition. [00:37:08] S1: Devin.
00:37:08 · Lenny Rachitsky, Noam Segal
[00:37:08] S1: Devin. [00:37:09] S0: And they are the makers of Devin. And I recall that when he described the product, he talked about this ladder that the product progressed on. It went from a high school CS student to a college intern to a junior engineer, and at this point probably a senior or a staff level engineer. I would say that we are all watching this technology climb the rungs of this ladder and advance, and we feel like the technology is pulling those rungs from under us. And so the further we've gone up the ladder, the better we feel about our careers and the more stability we have. But the lower we are on that ladder, those rungs getting pulled under our feet. And so it makes lots of sense that we wouldn't recommend being on that ladder to anyone else because the rungs are disappearing. [00:38:12] S1: Man, there's so much to talk about with all this, but let me point out a couple things as I look at this and then we can move on to the next takeaway. One is just, it's interesting that sales and PM are the least bad at don't get into this role. That's interesting. I wouldn't have expected that. Salespeople not as scared about the future of their role. PM. Interesting. That's a big audience here. Not as scared. As you said, research, design, the most don't do this. As a researcher, you touched on this a little bit, but I'm just curious, how does it feel seeing this result?
00:38:48 · Noam Segal
[00:38:48] S0: It's tough. I think the research community has lived with a lot of concerns and trauma and anxiety over the years around having a seat at the table, around finding meaning in our work, around topics like the democratization of research and other people taking on our roles and eventually replacing us. It definitely hurts a lot to see this. I think there's a very important role that research needs to play in the future of building products. I think that as this technology progressive, we should become even more thoughtful about what we build rather than less thoughtful. I've heard the narratives around it's so cheap to build, just build a thousand prototypes and see what works. I think you've heard this in a recent conversation as well. I would suggest that we're just going to get even more burnt out that way, I would not recommend that approach personally. I think research has a very, and design, has a very important part to play in raising the ceiling of what's possible. Whereas AI has mostly lowered the bar, but it hasn't raised the ceiling. And I can also tell you that PMs being somewhat more likely to recommend their roles, even though they're not likely to recommend their roles, does actually make sense to me. It's more of a generalist role, I would claim, than some of these other roles. And this is the era of the generalist, if you would ask me, the AI era. I'm the most surprised by sales and go-to-market because if we are indeed in some sort of SaaSpocalypse, which I don't personally believe we are, but it's been said, then I don't think sales and go-to-market people should be feeling too great about recommending their roles. But maybe they believe that sales at this point cannot be done by AI.
00:41:03 · Lenny Rachitsky, Noam Segal
[00:41:03] S1: Yeah. [00:41:03] S0: Just that. [00:41:03] S1: There's just so much I want to talk about here. It's important to note, this is a very important note that I'm going to say here, this doesn't mean design is going away or research is going away. This is just saying people in that role right now, the narrative in their head is don't do this. Does not mean this is over, because it could just be all this hype that we keep hearing. I'm guilty of adding to it from various guests, but this is just how people feel, doesn't mean this is what's happening. [00:41:34] S0: 100%. This entire unique project in tech is all about how people feel. It's not about the realities of working in tech. It's about people's emotions, about how people feel. I really do think no one other than us has really captured these emotions in the way that we have. But yeah, that's a great reminder. This is not an image of reality. This is an image of how people are feeling in tech right now. [00:42:00] S1: Another quick data point that we want to make sure to communicate here, you touched on this, but I don't know if you actually made this as clear to people as it should be. So this is looking at, would you recommend people get into my role? We also asked just how are you feeling about your role? Are you happy being in this role? And the result there was, I'm actually doing okay, I'm happy. I'm happy a designer, researcher. So as you said, it's this kind of, the water's fine, but don't get in. Talk a little bit about that just to make sure that point is clear.
00:42:00 · Lenny Rachitsky, Noam Segal
[00:42:00] S1: Another quick data point that we want to make sure to communicate here, you touched on this, but I don't know if you actually made this as clear to people as it should be. So this is looking at, would you recommend people get into my role? We also asked just how are you feeling about your role? Are you happy being in this role? And the result there was, I'm actually doing okay, I'm happy. I'm happy a designer, researcher. So as you said, it's this kind of, the water's fine, but don't get in. Talk a little bit about that just to make sure that point is clear. [00:42:28] S0: When we asked people things like, are they enjoying their job? As we talked about earlier, most people said that overall, yes, they're having fun in their role. I think what's going on here is that again, people are lacking optimism compared to what they were. Optimism has gone down. So there's a big difference between how people are feeling now about their role, given what they've achieved in their careers, and where they are on the ladder compared to what they're extrapolating might happen in a year, in three years, in five years. And what people are extrapolating might happen is clearly more negative than their current experiences. So yeah, I mean all in all, we're doing okay as an industry. We're enjoying, we're trying new things, we're experiencing a complete paradigm shift in how we work. And that's fun for a while, but it seems like people feel like this is not going in the best of directions. And of course I hope we're all wrong. I hope we're all wrong.