Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
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.
00:40:08 · Lenny Rachitsky, Keith Rabois
[00:40:08] S1: Yeah. I think that's the ultimate unicorn is an engineer that is also very business-minded. [00:40:13] S0: It's going to put a premium. I think this is what ... The age of AI will put an incredible premium on that because they're not going to need a large team. You're not going to be marshaling the forces. Another example is a good friend of mine is director of engineering at Ramp. He ships as much code personally. So he has a team of about 20 people. He personally ships as much code as he used to as an individual contributor while he's managing a team of 20 because the tools are so great and he's become a leading pioneer in the usage of AI. And he's basically using AI as a second team. He's basically like, "Okay, you're the team manager. You do this, you do this, you do this, this, this together, check this out, blah, blah, blah." And I think that is definitely the future. [00:40:58] S1: I 100% agree. Engineers that are very good at that are just extra valuable. What's your take on design in the future of design, the value of design? [00:41:08] S0: Well, it's interesting. Design and code are merging. And it's not clear to me who triumphs of is it code becomes design? And design just translate automatically into code. I've made some investments that bet on both in some ways, but I think they're merging in a way where they're not separate fiefdoms anymore.
00:41:33 · Lenny Rachitsky
[00:41:33] S1: I am so excited to tell you about this season's supporting sponsor Vanta. Vanta helps over 15,000 companies like Cursor, Ramp, Duolingo, Snowflake, and Atlassian earn and prove trust with their customers. Teams are building and shipping products faster than ever thanks to AI. But as a result, the amount of risk being introduced into your product and your business is higher than it's ever been. Every security leader that I talk to is feeling the increasing weight of protecting their organization, their business, and not to mention their customer data. Because things are moving so fast, they are constantly reacting, having to guess at priorities, and having to make do with outdated solutions. Vanta automates compliance and risk management with over 35 security and privacy frameworks, including SOC 2, ISO 27001, and HIPAA. This helps companies get compliant, fast, and stay compliant. More than ever before, trust has the power to make or break your business. Learn more at vanta.com/lenny. And as a listener of this podcast, you get $1,000 off Vanta. That's vanta.com/lenny. What I'm seeing is something really interesting happening with design. On the one hand, I just did some analysis on the job market for design. And it's basically plateaued in terms of the number of open design roles over the past three years, just hasn't gone anywhere. It's flat. We had the head of Claude design, Jenny Wen, on the podcast, and she had this insight that the design process ... There's no time for the traditional design process. There's like engineers are shipping 17 things a day. There's no time to sit there and help mock and prototype and all these things.