Evidence receipt / belief
Published · transcript-backedJenny Wen: belief
1 Mar 2026 Lenny's Podcast The design process is dead. Here’s what’s replacing it. | Jenny Wen (head of design at Claude)
“I think so. And I think traditionally, at least what I've seen, a lot of the engineering disciplines, when they hire EMs or even sometimes directors there, they actually make the EMs take a rotation for a few months and pick up a few tasks, and really understand how the technology works before they become a full-time manager.”
Source trail
Everything needed to verify it.
- Speaker
- Jenny Wen
- Attribution
- Verified speaker
- Claim type
- belief
- Recorded
- 1 Mar 2026
- Publisher
- Lenny's Podcast
Transcript context
…So the advice I'm hearing for people in design that are especially managers, is you almost need to move back into IC in order to truly understand what is happening and how much it's changing, so that you can be a better manager. I think so. And I think traditionally, at least what I've seen, a lot of the engineering disciplines, when they hire EMs or even sometimes directors there, they actually make the EMs take a rotation for a few months and pick up a few tasks, and really understand how the technology works before they become a full-time manager. And I think design probably needs to do something similar too, where I think in the past design has been much more people management oriented. What did you find yourself most rusty in when you went back to IC designer?…
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