Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
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.
01:22:52 · Lenny Rachitsky, Boris Cherny
[01:22:52] S1: Wow. [01:22:52] S0: And this is just one prompt. It'll do everything. And then the third thing is just run a bunch of Claudes in parallel. So, in Cowork you can have as many tasks running as you want. So, it's, like, start one task, I have this project management thing running, then I'll have it do something else, then something else, and then I'll kick these off. And then I just go get a coffee while it runs. [01:23:09] S1: There's a post I'll link to that shares a bunch of ways people use what was previously Claude Code, and now just you can do through Cowork. Because a lot of this is just like, "Wow. I hadn't thought I could use it for that." And once you see ... These examples I think are what people need to hear of just like, "Oh, wow. I didn't know I could do that." [inaudible 01:23:26]. [01:23:27] S0: I think a lot of this was also some of this was also inspired by you, Lenny. You had this post about ... It was, like, 50 non-technical use cases for Claude Code, or something like this. So, actually one of our PMs used that as a way to evaluate Cowork before we released it, and I think at the point where Cowork was able to do, like, 48 out of the 50, they were like, "Okay. It's pretty good." [01:23:46] S1: Wow. I did not know that. That is awesome. I've become an eval. [01:23:53] S0: Yeah. [inaudible 01:23:54]. [01:23:55] S1: Amazing. I feel like I'm valuable to the future of AI. [01:24:01] S0: This is, like, reverse breaking through.
01:24:01 · Boris Cherny, Lenny Rachitsky
[01:24:01] S0: This is, like, reverse breaking through. [01:24:05] S1: Wow. That is so cool. Wow. Okay. I wonder what those last two are. Anyway, okay. Two more questions. Do you have a favorite life motto that you often come back to in work or in life? [01:24:14] S0: Use common sense. I think a lot of the failures that I see, especially, in a work environment is people just failing to use common sense. Like, they follow a process without thinking about it. They just do a thing without thinking about it, or they're working on a product that's not a good product or not a good idea, and they're just following the momentum, and not thinking about it. I think the best results that I see are people thinking from first principles, and just developing their own common sense. If something smells weird then it's probably not a good idea. So, I think this is the single advice that I give to coworkers more than anything too. [01:24:46] S1: And I feel like that alone could be its own podcast conversation. What is common sense? How do you build? But we'll keep this short. Final question. So, you've got more active on Twitter/X. I'm curious just why and just what's your experience been with Twitter? The world of Twitter. Because you get a lot of engagement on Twitter/X. [01:25:06] S0: So, for a long time I used Threads exclusively, because I actually helped build Threads a little bit back in the day. And I also just like the design. It's a very clean product. [01:25:14] S1: Yeah.