Lenny Rachitsky: belief

Transcript context

…Yeah, it was pure just refusing to quit. I think I just walked into the office, I talked to the person at the front desk, "Is there anything that I can do?" They weren't hiring non-technical people. I didn't have a computer science degree. I wasn't technical. I had this bachelor of arts degree and that's why the personal assistant in the marketing role eventually did open and was something that I thought I could be qualified for. Cool. I think that's such an empowering lesson of if you look at someone like you and they're like, "Oh, she was so early at Facebook, how lucky," clearly wasn't luck. You knew you wanted to work at this company. You put a lot of effort into making it happen no matter the job. I think that's a really good takeaway and lesson. So if there's a company today that you are excited about that you're just like, "This is going to be a massive success," what I'm hearing is just do everything you can to try to land a job there and eventually you'll be in a role you actually want. It doesn't have to start there. When I got to Facebook, I knew I wanted to build. As someone who wasn't really technical, I wasn't going to be an engineer or a coder. I wanted to work with the engineers and the coders to build products. I thought product management was the right function for me, and so my dream was always to be a PM and it wasn't luck as to how I ended up becoming a PM. I sort of took the same approach showing up at the office asking if there were any roles. By then, we had moved to 156 University and all of the PMs and engineers worked on the second floor, and I was working in marketing, like I mentioned, and I worked on the third floor and all the business functions worked on the third floor, and my goal was to be a PM. I ended up going, sort of the analogy, I went to the second floor most days after work, asked if there were any projects that I could help out with. It was very early days. There was always more to do than people to do it. And so eventually I picked up a few projects, helping with program management, giving my product feedback, and by the time that I actually applied formally to be a product manager, I had been doing the job voluntarily, almost informally for a few months. And I remember this because I had a seat on the third floor. I picked up all the stuff on my desk, put it in a box, walked down to the second floor once I got the job to become a PM. And when I got to the second floor, I distinctly remember everyone on the second floor standing and clapping. And so it was a big standing ovation. I'll never forget, Boz was there, by the way. I know Boz has been on your podcast, but even Boz was there sort of standing and clapping. And so I guess to the lesson that you were trying to extract from my story, I do think I sort of tried to create the luck by not giving up and just repeatedly cold calling or cold showing up or cold volunteering until I sort of was able to make it happen.…

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