Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
00:33:15 · Lenny Rachitsky, Keith Rabois
[00:33:15] S1: CMO. [00:33:49] S0: ... because these people are intellectually curious. And so they're like, "Wow, there's all these cool things I can do now with my hands. Either I had to rely on other teams or never got access the way I wanted and blah, blah, blah or lag." And they just do it. This is actually true at Opendoor. It's true at another great company that I'm on the board of that's incredible. And so I think you can be intellectually curious and future-proof yourself more than just, yes, you can work harder and a big subscriber to no days off and working all the time and all that stuff. But fundamentally, the intellectual curiosity is, "I want to learn new things," and that is how you embrace the future. [00:34:29] S1: And you said CMO is who's the most- [00:34:31] S0: CMO. In both of these two companies- [00:34:31] S1: So interesting. [00:34:33] S0: ... both massive, awesome companies with lots of engineers. And I think that's very encouraging. For the executive particularly, like, "This is definitely the best executive in the company." [00:34:47] S1: And what are they building? Is it landing pages and paid tests? [00:34:51] S0: Well, sometimes it's more like what we would've thought of analytics. Sometimes it's actually campaigns, actual campaigns. It's just like they don't need to rely upon deputies and deputies and deputies to get actual work product. And so they're just shipping things or shipping drafts of things or giving the CEO insights into things themselves.
00:34:51 · Keith Rabois, Lenny Rachitsky
[00:34:51] S0: Well, sometimes it's more like what we would've thought of analytics. Sometimes it's actually campaigns, actual campaigns. It's just like they don't need to rely upon deputies and deputies and deputies to get actual work product. And so they're just shipping things or shipping drafts of things or giving the CEO insights into things themselves. [00:35:15] S1: I want to get your take on the future of specifically the product triad. You work with a lot of product people, engineers, designers. Everyone's always wondering, what the hell is going to happen in my career? Thoughts on just the future of those three specific roles?
00:35:30 · Keith Rabois
[00:35:30] S0: Well, I saw this podcast or I listened to this podcast that Peter Fenton did. And he convinced me that the idea of a PM makes no sense basically in the future. If you think about decomposing the logic is what does PM usually do? They take these inputs from customers, they create this sequential roadmap that's well organized over the next year, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That world is ridiculous. Right now, the capabilities of foundation models or companies like Lovable and things like that are just so improving such a rapid rate that it makes no sense to have a year-long roadmap. And they're just incoherent. There are things that were impossible to do in November that are actually pretty easy to do right now in March. And so I think you need to build an organization that's incredibly adept at, people say nimble and all that stuff, but incredibly adept at changing the roadmap almost on the fly. And I think intermediaries like conventional PMs don't make a lot of sense versus being prepared intellectually, embracing and exploding, noticing. So someone needs to notice that, "Oh, wow, we can actually do this." But then exploiting it this week is the future of a high growth stellar startup. We'll notice that something's now possible this week and create new features and new value for customers next week.
00:37:01 · Lenny Rachitsky, Keith Rabois
[00:37:01] S1: That's such an interesting area of discussion. A lot of people listening to this RPM. So I want to try to defend that role just to see if I can convince you otherwise. And by the way, I will say Marc Andreessen had this really good visual of just what's happening here is all those three functions, it's like the standoff where they're all like, "I'm good taking... The future is my role. The future is design, that's engineering is the future." So the way I see it is as AI makes it easier to build and eats the middle of the software development process, just anyone can build detailed AI, here's what I want. The hard part, the gap at least for now is figuring out what to build and then aligning everyone around what to build. [00:37:39] S0: I agree with that. I actually think whether you talk about someone who used to be a PM or someone who used to be a designer or called an engineer, the skill is more like being a CEO now, which is what are we building and why? [00:37:50] S1: Exactly.
00:37:50 · Lenny Rachitsky, Keith Rabois
[00:37:50] S1: Exactly. [00:37:51] S0: And to be a successful engineer, that trait's critical, to be a successful designer. Because the tools and the ability to actually create the thing, an object, is going to be easier and easier. But the art is knowing what to build. Another competitor of mine, Alfred Lin at Sequoia likes to talk about being a chef. When you're a chef at a prime restaurant, you're not actually cooking the dish. You're sampling your colleagues and editing their work a little bit, but fundamentally, it's half a commercial role. Being a chef at a famous restaurant is what's our value proposition? How do we differentiate ourselves? How do we brand ourselves? What's our segment? What's our pricing, et cetera? What's our location even? That's what makes a famous chef. It's not they're literally cooking the dish all the time. [00:38:41] S1: Okay. I 100% agree. Interestingly enough, PMs are called mini CEOs often. And I think the important thing is it's not like, what do you call this person? I think the question is what skill will be most ... Where are human brains still going to be necessary? And it's- [00:38:56] S0: Business acumen. It's basically business acumen. [00:38:59] S1: Right. What will help this company grow and succeed- [00:39:01] S0: Exactly. [00:39:01] S1: ... and win?
00:39:01 · Lenny Rachitsky, Keith Rabois
[00:39:01] S1: ... and win? [00:39:02] S0: I understand the company's business equation, where we're trying to go and what the inputs and connection outputs are. And I can, on my own, create things that move the needle or potentially move the needle. It's very exciting because you can actually drive impact much more easily now as an individual. [00:39:19] S1: My conclusion based on what you just shared is of the three roles, which role is best at that? And historically, it'd be PMs. Obviously, I think the important thing here is it's great PMs or great engineers, designers will do well. But I think interestingly, what you're describing to me is what it sounds like what a great PM would be really good at basically represents [inaudible 00:39:41] [00:39:41] S0: If they were exceptional, I think that's right. But I think a lot of the best engineers I've worked with have commercial instincts like Max Levchin has this on steroids. Jeremy Stoppelman, he's worked with me very closely at PayPal before he started Yelp and got promoted to be engineering director and vice president of PayPal, had commercial instincts back when he was an individual contributor. So I think there are great engineers who are technically proficient that have always understood the business building. [00:40:08] S1: Yeah. I think that's the ultimate unicorn is an engineer that is also very business-minded.