Vlad Loktev: observation

Transcript context

…Yeah, I've found exactly the same thing, just thinking backwards from what is the best possible thing we could do, versus incrementally forward ends up unlocking a lot of big ideas. Something I imagine is in people's minds as they hear some of this stuff, like designing something in 24 hours or thinking 10x bigger is, "I don't want to work that way. That sounds incredibly stressful. That sounds really hard." You mentioned this, that this isn't necessarily for everyone. Not everyone needs to work at this company, or work this way. Part of it is hiring, is finding people that want to lean in, to work really hard. Other people don't. Is there anything there, of just, this is actually really hard, and it's not for everyone, but it also ends up being successful, and you end up having a good time a lot of times afterwards? I find that those sprints, where, "Design this in 24 hours," brought a lot of connection to the team, actually, and they were my most fun moments, actually, because you're forced to let go of a lot of constraints. All these organizational dependencies disappear, all the stuff that's noise, and you can just start building. For me, especially when you're not doing this by yourself, and you're doing this with a team of people, it was deeply rewarding, because you were all working together just shooting the shit, and throwing a whole bunch of ideas out there. No idea was too crazy. Now, it's not for everybody. I actually, in the interview process, when I would hire PMs, I was always, not always, in the early days I had to learn this, but in the later days, I always set expectations about how we work. I think some leaders do this, it's the anti-sell sell, where I will share the worst day, or what I think you will think as a candidate what the worst day would be at Airbnb, and then still ask you if you want to join the team. I would basically tell people, "We're going to work day and night. We're going to work weekends. The direction is going to change. The strategy? Out the window every three months. The projects you're working on today, we're going to kill three weeks later. The road map that you are right now auditing as you're deciding your offer, when you actually join after you took some break from your other job, it's going to completely change." I think the common thread there is, "Everything is changing all the time. You've got to be cool with that if you want to join this team," and totally fine if that's not for you. I love that. It makes me think of something when my colleague used to say to me is, "If you haven't changed teams or your desk in six months, something's about to happen. Something's about to change."…

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