Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
00:19:53 · Lenny Rachitsky
[00:19:53] S1: I talk to a lot of people about just like, what should I be studying? Where should I be getting better? People in school right now are just like, what is even going to be valuable in the future? You're at the center of a lot of just what jobs are most in demand, how hiring is evolving. So let me just ask you a very concrete question. What jobs do you think will remain in the futurewhat skills are still worth investing in for younger people especially?
00:20:19 · Brendan Foody
[00:20:19] S0: In terms of jobs, I would respond with a category of things that have very elastic demand are going to be super exciting. Because when we make people 10 times more productive, we'll build 10 times, if not a 100 times as much software as an example. Right? So I think the product managers that can now do so much more are going to be extremely well positioned. And so far as the skills, I think it's people that can leverage AI to do whatever their day to day workflows are. Like I have had a couple conversations with teachers where they get my thoughts on how they should be assessing their students, because we originally started out curating all of these AI interviews and assessments for people and have thought about this immensely. And what we realized is that you don't want to fight against them using the models, right? It's sort of similar to like when the calculator came out, you don't want to give people all of this arithmetic homework of like, how do you get them to do it and not use the calculator? You want to tell them, use the tools and let's see what you can do. And so we'll give people interviews where we say, use ChatGPT and Codecs, use Cloud Code, use whatever tool, cursor and whatever tools are available to build a website. And let's see what product you're able to build in an hour. And so I think that I give that an example insofar as talent assessment, because I think it pertains also to the skills that people should be honing in on of how can they leverage this technology to do so much more in whatever industry or vertical they're operating in.
00:21:48 · Lenny Rachitsky, Brendan Foody
[00:21:48] S1: When you talk about elastic being elastic, is it like generalists being good at just a bunch of different things? Or what do you say? What do you mean when you think elastic? [00:21:56] S0: So I more mean how much capacity for demand there is in that industry. So I'll give a couple of examples. Like in accounting, I think realistically, we only need so much accounting in the world, right? Like maybe there's areas where we can do more and that'll be good, but it doesn't feel like the world needs a 100 times more accounting. On the other hand, in software development, right? Like I think we can ship a 100 times more features for our products, move a 100 times faster, build so much more. There's just, it feels like there's unlimited demand for the industry. I think, Mark Andreessen tweeted about this recently that software is the most elastic industry of all, where when we increase productivity, there's so much more that will be built. And it's definitely characteristic of a lot of other domains as well. And so I would focus on those domains where if we make everyone 10 times more productive, that'll increase demand, not reduce it. [00:22:55] S1: Okay. So you're you're in the bucket of learn to code still useful as a skill. Take computer science. Okay. And so in terms of elastic categories of jobs, sounds like engineering, product management is in that bucket, great. A lot of people listening to those are PMs. Else, like design, user research, I don't know, what else do you feel is in that bucket from what you've seen?
00:22:55 · Lenny Rachitsky, Brendan Foody
[00:22:55] S1: Okay. So you're you're in the bucket of learn to code still useful as a skill. Take computer science. Okay. And so in terms of elastic categories of jobs, sounds like engineering, product management is in that bucket, great. A lot of people listening to those are PMs. Else, like design, user research, I don't know, what else do you feel is in that bucket from what you've seen? [00:23:16] S0: Yeah, think that there's a lot of things where the whole value chain of building companies has a lot of these variable costs, even large portions of operations or consulting, right? Like imagine if we could have 10 times as many McKinsey consultants, what would be possible insofar as the research we could do, the analysis, etcetera. But I think the companies and people that are going to succeed are those that lean into this narrative of abundance, of how do we do so much more, rather than fighting back against it of how do we try to stop displacement.
00:23:16 · Brendan Foody, Lenny Rachitsky
[00:23:16] S0: Yeah, think that there's a lot of things where the whole value chain of building companies has a lot of these variable costs, even large portions of operations or consulting, right? Like imagine if we could have 10 times as many McKinsey consultants, what would be possible insofar as the research we could do, the analysis, etcetera. But I think the companies and people that are going to succeed are those that lean into this narrative of abundance, of how do we do so much more, rather than fighting back against it of how do we try to stop displacement. [00:23:52] S1: So along those lines, think about your second bucket, which is the people that will be most successful. It's not like a specific skill, but it's being good with AI, using AI to become more, become better at what you're already doing. This reminds me of Elon's whole thing with Neuralink, which I don't know if this is how he put it, the way I've always heard it is he wanted to build Neuralink because in the future when AGI and super intelligence is around, we need a way to compete and the best way to compete is plug our brains into a super intelligence so we have a chance. And it feels like that's what AI is, like getting good at AI tools is essentially, is having this super power. [00:24:30] S0: Figuring out how to leverage them and incorporate it will definitely be of paramount importance. [00:24:35] S1: Yeah, just comes back to this almost cliche quote now. It's, AI won't replace you. People that are really good with AI will replace you.
00:24:35 · Lenny Rachitsky, Brendan Foody
[00:24:35] S1: Yeah, just comes back to this almost cliche quote now. It's, AI won't replace you. People that are really good with AI will replace you. [00:24:41] S0: I think it's totally spot on. And I've definitely seen this at the enterprise level as well, where there are certain enterprises we talk to that are almost like fearful, wanting to engage, not wanting to, you know, eval their businesses because that'll provide the evidence that their value chain is being automated. There's others that, I mean, like, you know, some of the most recognized sophisticated fortune 500 businesses that, that have this mentality. And there's others that are leaning into it of, if we have the ability to do 10 or a 100 times more, what will that mean? And how do we lean into that future? Because there's so many things that are gonna change over the next ten years. And I think those are the kinds of businesses that are gonna be successful. [00:25:26] S1: Let's talk about labor markets more broadly. You you guys so it's interesting, though. You started not feeding people to AI labs, training models. It was just, help people find jobs, help companies hire, and then you're like, oh, wow. This whole opportunity. You have this really interesting view on the future of just labor markets and hiring. Talk about that.