Lenny Rachitsky: evaluation

Transcript context

…Yeah, I mean I think having a broader view of the company strategy, having an instinct for what we should be doing and why and how I might prioritize all of these investments if I were given the opportunity to do that, I think internalizing that and understanding that and then trying to align whatever is under your influence towards that overall goal is very helpful and made me feel like, "I'm pretty confident this is going to be okay because it will lead to better results for the organization given what we're trying to do. And so as long as I'm trying to push decisions or actions that actually lead to better results, if it's a healthy culture and organization, I should be okay." I think that the other thing is, just over the years, I got extremely lucky. The first job that I got out of school was an incredible group of people and it gave me a nose for talent. It gave me a nose for what great feels like and what a high functioning team feels like. It's hard to know that without experiencing that. And so in the moments, YouTube was also one of those teams, Grammarly is one of those teams, Thumbtack was one of those teams. Being able to sniff that out when you're trying to choose the next team is very important. But I think that's another thing that gave me confidence. I learned these people well enough, Hunter, Shishir, et cetera, to have the instinct that the right thing will happen, like this will be better for me and the broader team. Got it. So the key there is just you have to trust that the team around you is good enough, that you're not going to be pushed off into a corner. I think you made a really profound point here that a lot of people don't get about the job of a product leader and a product manager, that a big part of your job is to think about what is best for the business and work backwards from that. Not necessarily what's the best thing for the user is the highest priority, not necessarily what's the best thing for my team and how do I hit the goals that I'm obsessed with. It's what is going to be best for the business broadly and then make decisions there. Is there anything more you can say there about just how powerful that is as a way of thinking about prioritization and decisions as a product manager? Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, I think ideally, things that are best for the customer, there's high overlap with that with things that are best for the business, but not always, right? And I think figuring out some principles that help guide those sorts of conflicts can be really, really helpful. At Thumbtack, we had principles about which sides of the marketplace we wanted to serve in which order and when we serve Thumbtack. So it was customers first, pros second, and then Thumbtack last. And that's actually the first two... Saying Thumbtack last is the easy thing to say. Actually doing it in action I think is a very different thing. But that first one of like, should we... Especially when you're starting a marketplace, as you know well, Lenny, supply is so critical. Many marketplaces live and die by the quality and liquidity and supply. And so why would you focus on customers first and the Thumbtack perspective and supply are the pros, the people that you hire? Well, we always just felt that what the pros need from us is more customers. What the pros need from us is high quality customers. And so if we really try to make a great customer experience that attracts more customers, helps them find the right pros, provides the highest quality customers, then that will therefore be better for the pros. And so that's how we should prioritize. If we do those things right, then the business will benefit, right? And so doing things like raising prices because we think it's good for the business, even though it causes liquidity issues in the marketplace might be a little bit of a local maxima, locally optimizing rather than globally optimizing. So I think sometimes in these sorts of questions, trying to establish some set of guiding principles that help navigate some of these more ambiguous or thorny questions can be really helpful.…

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