Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
01:05:09 · Lenny Rachitsky, Oji Udezue
[01:05:09] S1: Oji, is there anything else that you want to share before we get to our very exciting lightning round? [01:05:14] S0: In the history of product development, we have basically started to create abstraction to guide our work, right, versus wild, wild, wild west. So the engineers came up with agile and pair programming and all these things. The designers have come up with, you know, design thinking, design sprints, and combined with research to talk about how to do discovery of various complexity. And the question is, the product abstractions, because there's code, there's product, there's business. So the product and business layer, what is our abstraction? What is our crucible for organizing our work? We don't even have one. We don't have a name for it. And so the idea of a part system is that there's an abstraction above agile and design thinking that we have to pay attention to how to build solid organizations and to execute well at the product and the business layer. This is a co creative framework with me and Ezine. And the idea here is how do you construct a good product system? And literally, could boil it down into a checklist of the systems you need to build to build a really good cohesive r and d organization. So I think that's the tee up. I'm gonna have to leave you thirsty because someone else is probably gonna go deep into it. [01:06:35] S1: Amazing. And that's your wife that you mentioned who you are cocreating this framework with and who we're gonna have on the podcast in the future. [01:06:39] S0: That's right.
01:06:39 · Oji Udezue, Lenny Rachitsky
[01:06:39] S0: That's right. [01:06:41] S1: What is it like being married to another product leader would you recommend? [01:06:45] S0: A 100%. You're have really, really productive conversations, and you can you can redesign other companies' applications in one conversation in the evening. [01:06:57] S1: Amazing. Well, that was, almost the lightning round question, but I moved it up earlier. And so with that, we've reached our very exciting lightning round. Are you ready? [01:07:06] S0: Yeah. I'm ready. Let's do it. [01:07:07] S1: Okay. Great. Let's do it. What what are two or three books that you've recommended most to other people?
01:07:07 · Lenny Rachitsky, Oji Udezue
[01:07:07] S1: Okay. Great. Let's do it. What what are two or three books that you've recommended most to other people? [01:07:13] S0: There's one business book that I recommend. I think it's called The Halo Effect. It's basically a book that lets you call bullshit on all these business books that are... Tell you all kinds of stupid shit. It is how to deconstruct what is important in a business and self help book and what is not important and what is just circumstantial storytelling with random facts and form fitting evidence. It's called the Halo Effect. Read it. Why do you need to read it? Because garbage in, garbage out. You know, people were amazed at the outlier effect Malcolm Gladwell, and then people have been tearing it down for fifteen years now. But everyone ingested it and and thought it was the most important thing. But how do you how do you know what's important to take away from it and what's not? The Halo Effect will help you. And then the other thing is I read for pleasure because I read a lot for work. And so science fiction is the thing. There's lots to recommend, but I would say that people should either read Dune, Frank Herbert, or Foundation by Asimov. If you haven't read those two things and you're a science fiction, person, you really should. The world building is incredible. It's not... You know, I understand Tolkien and fantasy, but the science fiction side of it is those two books. [01:08:31] S1: There's also a TV series of Foundation now, which I can't say recommend absolutely, but, it's it's a beautiful show.
01:08:31 · Lenny Rachitsky, Oji Udezue
[01:08:31] S1: There's also a TV series of Foundation now, which I can't say recommend absolutely, but, it's it's a beautiful show. [01:08:39] S0: Yeah. No. I... I've... I haven't watched Foundation yet. I I I just felt like... I just felt super weird watching it after reading it. And I I could only make it through, three quarters of Dune version... You know, part one, but I will make it through them. I don't expect them. The books are glorious. If you love prose, the books are, man, crazy. But, I will get through them eventually. [01:09:04] S1: I've not actually read Dune, but the movie was incredible. I played the video game Dune where you're just mining spice all day and just stuck in my brain forever. Okay. Next question. What is a favorite interview question that you like to ask candidates that you're interviewing?
01:09:04 · Lenny Rachitsky, Oji Udezue
[01:09:04] S1: I've not actually read Dune, but the movie was incredible. I played the video game Dune where you're just mining spice all day and just stuck in my brain forever. Okay. Next question. What is a favorite interview question that you like to ask candidates that you're interviewing? [01:09:18] S0: I try to ask two... I feel this feels... I feel like it's gonna give people a cheat sheet when I interview them. But I I I try to ask two questions. So I'm not... I... I'm not a person who does favorites, so it's it's hard for me to pick favorites. But I ask people to introduce themselves, and I think it tells me a lot about them, how they tell about themselves, what they say about themselves, and the content of it. I ask people about the things they think they're truly great at. And then I ask people about the things they think they need to learn. About... In the... For for... The latter two is about their professional skill, their craft. I think it tells me a lot about how they communicate. It tells me a lot about how thoughtful they are. It tells me a lot about what they're proud of and what they lead into. And those kinds of things are very important to me. [01:10:10] S1: What is a favorite product you recently discovered that you love?
01:10:10 · Lenny Rachitsky, Oji Udezue
[01:10:10] S1: What is a favorite product you recently discovered that you love? [01:10:13] S0: I have been optimizing my workspace a lot. So I'm on a kick right now where I use Windows, you know, I I I was in Windows PM, and I still have my Windows box. But a lot of people use Macs at work, and I've used Macs for the last few years. So even though I switched between them, I've been spending a lot more time on Mac, and my Windows experience is completely optimized. Like, it is perfect. But Mac, I'm like, the windowing sucks. There's all these gaps I see. So I've been trying to figure out how to dial in my Mac experience. I've been... You know, I hate the activity monitor sucks. Like, what's a replacement? You know, the sound, It doesn't support, sound through HDMI or sound through... I don't know. Just some weird setup. So I've been optimizing that. One particular product that I like in the context of that is Unlox. It's a, like, one man product that allows me to just look at my phone and log into my Mac when I walk up and then locks it when I walk away. And it actually detects my proximity, it'll start the logging process while I get close. I think that's incredible. And I feel like it improves my productivity. [01:11:25] S1: Very cool. Sounds like a lot of hater raid for Macs over here. [01:11:29] S0: Well, for someone who uses it a lot. No, I think, you know, pros and cons. I'm not... I'm no longer paid by Microsoft, so I have things I don't like, but there are also things that, you know, the Mac isn't perfect either.