Lenny Rachitsky: belief

Transcript context

…I know, I'm kidding. Okay, so there's two more things I want to spend a little time on before we close up. One is your work in Europe, so you're a product leader in Europe, and I want to hear a little bit about what it's like to be a product person in Europe. And then two, I want to hear about the startup. So, at this point no one can actually fire. You have your own company that you're running, and I want to spend a little time here. Usually we don't spend time on this sort of stuff, but you're working on something very cool that I think is going to be really helpful to a lot of people in a really meaningful way. So, I want to spend a little time there. But before that, so you're living in France now. Before you started your company, you were interviewing for CPR roles in France, you work with a lot of French companies, European companies. I'm curious what you've noticed might be different in the cultures of tech companies in France and Europe in general versus the U.S. It's been really fascinating, I think. So, my entire career has been in the U.S., and I'm just starting to understand what that European and the French market in particular looks like. And my read so far is that product management has really exploded I think in Europe in recent years, but the market dynamics are still quite different. In the U.S. I think you have this inherently very liquid and dynamic market. I think, this is my interpretation of it, but I think it leads to greater ownership and accountability for people and product at all levels. So, product managers and leaders, they join a startup and you're immediately in charge of a relatively meaningful piece of the business, with genuine autonomy oftentimes. It doesn't always happen, but oftentimes I think that's the case. And if things don't work out, well, there's this expectation that you'll be managed out. There are countless memes on LinkedIn about the tenure of CPOs at tech companies to illustrate that. I think in France the market is much less liquid, so it's incredibly difficult to change jobs, and it's very expensive to fire someone in France. So, it seems to lead to two effects beyond the obvious job security. One is, I think PMs tend to have less autonomy and ownership, and a little bit more like micromanagement. And there are also less business owners than they can be in the U.S. And I see founders and managers struggling to let go of control a little bit more, again because it's understandable in a way, you don't have as much of a control as you do in the U.S. And so, you see a lot of really fascinating effects. You have startups who tend to wait a little bit longer before hiring, especially in product. The art of product a little bit less of a thing. You have a lot of amazing PMs in France, but the recognition of the craft is a little bit different outside of the people who practice it. And you have a lot of real interesting outsourcing also, you see startups and companies of all sizes actually relying on great product studios, like Mozza, to build end-to-end products from the ground up. So, something that's been really, really interesting. Another side that I see is this dominance of business over tech in France. There isn't as much of a cult of technology and software engineering in France as there is in the U.S. And so, the French Ivy League schools are business schools, like HEC, and the most highly valuable skill that you get is soft skills around management and business. It differs from the stereotype of the CS degree, Stanford dropout that you have in Silicon Valley. And I think because of a few of those things that I just mentioned, less liquid job market, but also less liquid financial markets, the last thing that I've observed that's interesting that's also around ownership I guess, is equity is much less meaningful in France. So, of the product leaders that I talked to, most of them consider their equity to be virtually worthless.…

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