Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
01:16:56 · Lenny Rachitsky, Boris Cherny
[01:16:56] S1: I love this. A never before mentioned book. My favorite. [01:16:59] S0: Oh, amazing. Amazing. Okay. Second one is Accelerando by Stross. My big genre is sci-fi. Probably sci-fi and fiction. Accelerando is just this incredible book. And it's just so fast-paced. The pace gets faster and faster and faster. And I just feel like it captures the essence of this moment that we're in more than any other book that I've read, just the speed of it. And it starts as a lift-off is starting to happening, and is starting to approach the singularity. And it ends with this collective lobster consciousness orbiting Jupiter. And this happens over the span of a few decades or something. So, the pace is just incredible. I really love it. Maybe I'll do one more book. The Wandering Earth. Wandering Earth by Liu Cixin. So, he's the guy that did Three Body Problem. I think a lot of people know him for that. Actually I think Three Body Problem was awesome, but I actually liked his short stories even more. So, Wandering Earth is one of the short story collections, and he just has some really, really amazing stories. And it's also just quite interesting to see Chinese sci-fi, because it has a very different perspective than western sci-fi, and the way that, at least, he, as a writer, thinks about it. So, it's just really, really interesting to read, and just beautifully written. [01:18:15] S1: It's so interesting how sci-fi has prepared us to think about where things are going. It creates these [inaudible 01:18:21] models of like, "Okay. I see. I've read about this sort of world."
01:18:15 · Lenny Rachitsky, Boris Cherny
[01:18:15] S1: It's so interesting how sci-fi has prepared us to think about where things are going. It creates these [inaudible 01:18:21] models of like, "Okay. I see. I've read about this sort of world." [01:18:24] S0: Yeah. I think, for me, this was the reason that I joined Anthropic actually, because, like I said, I was living in this rural place. I was thinking these long-time skills, because everything is just so slow out there. At least, compared to SF. And just all the things that you do are based around the seasons, and it's based around this food that takes many, many months. That's the way that social events were organized. That's the way that you organize your time. You go to the farmer's market, and it's persimmon season, and you know that, because there's 20 persimmon vendors. And then the next week the season is done, and it's, like, grape season. And you see this. So, it's these long-time skills. And I was also reading a bunch of sci-fi at the time. And just being in this moment, I was just thinking about these long-time skills. I know how this thing can go. And I felt like I had to contribute to it going a little bit better. And that's actually why I ended up at Ant. And Ben Mann was also a big part of that too. [01:19:17] S1: I feel like I want to do a whole podcast just talking about your time in Japan, and the journey of Boris through Japan to Anthropic. But we'll keep it short. I'll quickly recommend a sci-fi book to you if you haven't read it. Have you read Fire Upon The Deep? [01:19:32] S0: This is Vinge. Right? Yeah. [01:19:33] S1: Yes.
01:19:33 · Lenny Rachitsky, Boris Cherny
[01:19:33] S1: Yes. [01:19:34] S0: It's great. [01:19:34] S1: Okay. That one, it's so interesting from an AI/AGI perspective. So few people have read that. So, [inaudible 01:19:41]. Yeah. It's like [inaudible 01:19:42]- [01:19:42] S0: I really like the ... Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I like Deepness in the Sky also. I think [inaudible 01:19:49] sequel. Right? [01:19:42] S1: Yeah. [01:19:50] S0: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think so. [01:19:52] S1: Yeah. It's very long, and complex to get into, but so good. Okay. We'll keep going through our lightning round. Do you have a favorite recent movie or TV show you've really enjoyed? [01:19:59] S0: So, I actually don't really watch TV or movies. I just don't really have time these days. I did watch ... I'm going to bring up another Liu Cixin, but the Three Body Problem series on Netflix I really loved. I thought that was a great rendition of the book series. [01:20:12] S1: So, the common pattern across AI leaders is no time to watch TV or movies, which I completely understand. Is there a favorite product you've recently discovered that you really love?
01:20:12 · Lenny Rachitsky, Boris Cherny
[01:20:12] S1: So, the common pattern across AI leaders is no time to watch TV or movies, which I completely understand. Is there a favorite product you've recently discovered that you really love? [01:20:22] S0: I'm going to shill a little bit, and just say Cowork, because this is, legitimately, the one product that's been pretty life-changing for me just because I have it running all the time. And the Chrome integration, in particular, is just really excellent. So, it's been like ... It paid a traffic fine for me, it canceled a couple subscriptions for me. Just the amount of tedious work it gets out of the way is awesome. I also don't know if it's a product, but maybe also another podcast that I really love ... Obviously, besides Lenny is- [01:20:51] S1: Obviously. [01:20:52] S0: Yeah. It's the Acquired podcast by Ben and David. It's just super awesome. I feel like the way that they get into business history, and bring it alive is really, really good. And I would start with the Nintendo episode if you haven't listened to it. [01:21:08] S1: Great tip. With Cowork, just so people understand if they haven't tried this, basically, you type something you want to get done and it can launch Chrome, and just do things for you. I saw someone went on pat leave from Anthropic, and you had to fill out these medical forms for him, these really annoying PDFs where it just loads up the browser, logs in, fills them out, [inaudible 01:21:29].
01:21:08 · Lenny Rachitsky, Boris Cherny
[01:21:08] S1: Great tip. With Cowork, just so people understand if they haven't tried this, basically, you type something you want to get done and it can launch Chrome, and just do things for you. I saw someone went on pat leave from Anthropic, and you had to fill out these medical forms for him, these really annoying PDFs where it just loads up the browser, logs in, fills them out, [inaudible 01:21:29]. [01:21:30] S0: Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. And it actually just works. Like, we tried this experiment a year ago, and it didn't really work, because the model wasn't ready, but now it actually just works and it's amazing. I think a lot of people just don't really understand what this is, because they haven't used an agent before, and it just feels very, very similar, to me, to Claude Code a year ago. But, like I said, it's just growing much faster than Claude Code did in the early days. So, I think it's starting to break through a bit. [01:21:55] S1: And there's also this Chrome extension that you mentioned that you could just leave standalone that sits in Chrome, and you could just talk to Claude looking at your screen, at your browser, and have it do stuff, have it tell you about what you're looking at, summarize what you're looking at, things like that.
01:21:55 · Lenny Rachitsky, Boris Cherny
[01:21:55] S1: And there's also this Chrome extension that you mentioned that you could just leave standalone that sits in Chrome, and you could just talk to Claude looking at your screen, at your browser, and have it do stuff, have it tell you about what you're looking at, summarize what you're looking at, things like that. [01:22:08] S0: Exactly. Exactly. For people that are just learning to use Cowork, the thing I recommend is, so, you download the Claude desktop app, you go to the Cowork tab, it's right next to the code tab. The thing that I recommend doing is start by having it use a tool. So, clean up your desktop, or summarize your email, or something like this, or respond to the top three emails. It actually just responds to emails for me now too. The second thing is connect tools. So, if you say, "Look at my top emails," and then sends back messages ... Or put them in a spreadsheet, or something. But, for example, I use it for all my product management. So, we have a single spreadsheet for the whole team. There's a row for engineer. Every week, everyone fills out a status. And every Monday, Cowork just goes through and it messages every engineer on Slack that hasn't filled out their status. And so, I don't have to do this anywhere. [01:22:52] S1: Wow.