Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
01:20:08 · Elena Verna
[01:20:08] S0: I'll I'll premise it to saying I don't wanna rain parade on full time roles. They're wonderful on your ability to learn, to get the expertise, and depending on which career stage you are at, full time roles might be the absolute necessity for you to move on to and unlock the next level. However, full time roles box us into one company that may not be a great fit for us culturally, for our skills, for our ambitions, for our interests. Life is too short for that and ability to really go and figure out your own best monetization model, just like you work on that for your business, you should work for that on yourself without an assumption that full time is the only option that you should have. So, what are the other options? There's so many. Obviously, the couple known ones, freelancing. You can be a contractor. I do a lot of advising and consulting because for my brain of how I work and how I like to puzzle solve and pattern match, it works much better to be horizontal across many companies versus vertical on one specific one. But that doesn't mean I still don't take those vertical engagements to deepen my knowledge into any specific topic. But overall, it's a lot more interesting for me to pattern match across multiple companies and help them grow as opposed to just focusing on one. There's interim engagements where there's a predetermined end date to your agreement. There's fractional engagements where you're working part time on something as opposed to engulfing yourself completely full time. There's other ways to create courses. There's a way to create newsletters and monetize them like you're doing, Lenny, such a fantastic job. So, there's just so many options and people are sometimes paralyzed by fear of instability that it creates when you start to explore other options because you don't have that contract with that one company that provides you that paycheck every two weeks to rely on. But at the same time, you can create diversification for your career and you can create stability. It just depends on when you need to pull that trigger and when is the right time for you to explore. But to spend your entire career only assuming full time is the only way, I think is a complete mistake that a lot of people are doing. One
01:22:33 · Lenny Rachitsky
[01:22:33] S1: of my favorite posts of yours is along these lines, which is around increasing... What you wanna do is increase optionality. Yes. And I guess talk about that because I think it's a really powerful So piece of
01:22:44 · Elena Verna
[01:22:44] S0: this advice of career optionality being the ultimate north star for anybody in their professional journey is something that I'm very strong on because a lot of people have the goal of, I don't know, maybe I want to be a VP, or I want to become a CEO, or I don't know, I want to be a manager and I want to like people manage. And this becomes their north star and they start working towards it. But a lot of people, they get to their perceived corporate ladder north stars, find themselves extremely dissatisfied, depressed even, by how terrible that job is. Could people manage your job? I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy because it's a terrible job if you don't enjoy it and you don't know if you're gonna like it until you actually do it. So I think setting a title as your goal, which so many of us have titles as goals, is very wrong way to think about it as opposed to saying, Hey, my goal professionally is actually to have options so I can choose what I want to do, so I can choose what fits my life right now, that I can choose what fits my skills and that fits my personality, and that makes me happy. And to get career optionality, if that's your goal, you start thinking about your progression a lot differently. You're not starting to think about it of what will get me to the next title. You start thinking about what can I do next year that will increase my option pool? And that's very different than just getting to a higher title. And if you start thinking about evaluating opportunities or like whether you should stay at the company, whether you should move at the company from the lens of, does it increase my options if I stay at this company one more year? Or does it keep it the same? Or does it actually potentially decrease? That is the right way to find your ultimate happy place and happy job that brings you energy, that brings you happiness versus just going for a title and then being very disappointed with what that brings along with it.
01:24:48 · Lenny Rachitsky, Elena Verna
[01:24:48] S1: Amazing advice. So important. And something I'll add that I think is a balance to what people may be feeling here is like, oh, I'll just bounce around all the best logo companies and create this killer resume. I think you also need to build depth and actual experience Yes. That you can tap into if you do any of these things. For example, a lot of people wanna jump to, I'm gonna be a newsletter person. I'm gonna start podcast, be an adviser, before they've done anything real. And you have nothing to actually base your advice on. [01:25:14] S0: You have to earn your right to unlock optionality. And earning that right does usually lie within full time jobs. That is a universal truth. But then at some point, you should start not just looking at full time jobs as the only option that you have. You should start to think about when can you start unlocking new ones and testing the market on it. [01:25:38] S1: The other point is that you've been a great example of is it's not a one way door. You can have full time job, go to something else, go back to full time job, be an advisor, be an interim person, be a newsletter person. You do that really well. [01:25:52] S0: You should you should do it all. It's all a menu of options. And you pick a menu item that fits you best in any given point of your life. It's never say never and never shut the door on anything. Absolutely.
01:25:52 · Elena Verna, Lenny Rachitsky
[01:25:52] S0: You should you should do it all. It's all a menu of options. And you pick a menu item that fits you best in any given point of your life. It's never say never and never shut the door on anything. Absolutely. [01:26:03] S1: Oh my god. Elena, this was incredible. Before we get to our very exciting lightning round, is there anything else you wanna share or leave listeners with? Maybe a last nugget or thought or not? Because we've covered a lot already. [01:26:13] S0: No. I think we've covered so much. [01:26:14] S1: I don't [01:26:14] S0: wanna overwhelm. [01:26:15] S1: Let's do it. With that, we've reached our very exciting lightning round. Are you ready? [01:26:20] S0: Yes. I'm ready. [01:26:22] S1: First question, surprise, surprise. What are two or three books you've recommended most to other people? [01:26:27] S0: Okay. So I just finished this book that I love so much. It's not a it's not a professional book, but it's Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. It's the same author that wrote Martian. Martian also was made in the movie. [01:26:43] S1: So good. [01:26:44] S0: So good. I can put it down. I think I read it in like two days straight. So, highly recommend that. And the next one that I also started reading right now is Bobiverse. Bobiverse is so good. It actually takes into account of like AI and how we can upload our consciousness in AI and what can happen with that. So highly recommended. I think it's actually closer to what potentially can be in the truth for us in the future than not. But I'm a big sci fi geek, so I read mostly sci fi books.
01:26:44 · Elena Verna, Lenny Rachitsky
[01:26:44] S0: So good. I can put it down. I think I read it in like two days straight. So, highly recommend that. And the next one that I also started reading right now is Bobiverse. Bobiverse is so good. It actually takes into account of like AI and how we can upload our consciousness in AI and what can happen with that. So highly recommended. I think it's actually closer to what potentially can be in the truth for us in the future than not. But I'm a big sci fi geek, so I read mostly sci fi books. [01:27:13] S1: I have a sci fi recommendation for you that comes from Noah Smith. He has an... I love his newsletter. It's called Noahpinion, and he has a list of his favorite sci fi books that I've been working my way through. It's called... You may have read it by Vernor Vinge, Fire Upon the Deep. Have you heard of this? No. I have not. It's a... It's described as a... Not a sci fi, but space... Like a space opera where it's epic... The most epic scale of universe story. [01:27:38] S0: I'll download it tonight. It'll be on my list. [01:27:40] S1: Takes a little bit to get into. It's, like, quite unique, but you just keep going and it's incredible. And AI plays a big role in it actually. That's awesome. Okay. [01:27:49] S0: I'll then let it. [01:27:49] S1: There you go. Okay. Question number two. Favorite recent movie or TV show you really enjoyed?