Why half of product managers are in trouble | Nikhyl Singhal (Meta, Google)

频道: Lenny's Podcast
视频: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUohoaC8_Hs
原文语言: en
统计: 共 112 轮 · Nikhyl 43 · Lenny 39

[0:00] Nikhyl

The skills that used to be really valued in product managers are changing substantially.

产品经理以前重视的技能正在发生巨大变化。

[0:04] Nikhyl

It's going to be chaos. Our industry is very much in stress. Nothing's constant. Everyone's in a state of alert. If you talk to product leaders 3 years ago, their day was largely moving information. The information mover is essentially going to become a dinosaur.

这会很混乱。我们的行业压力很大。没什么是恒定的。每个人都处于高度警戒状态。如果你问三年前的产品领导者，他们的工作主要就是传递信息。那些信息传递者本质上会变成恐龙。

[0:22] Lenny

I just did this report on the job market. Interestingly, we have the most open PM roles globally in three plus years.

我刚完成了一份关于就业市场的报告。有意思的是，我们现在全球PM职位空缺数量是三年多以来最多的。

[0:30] Nikhyl

This is a complete renaissance for the product industry, but it comes with a lot of strings attached. In the next 12 to 24 months, we're going to see massive shedding of staffs and then massive rehiring. You might see a company shed 30,000 and hire 8,000, but the 8,000 people are going to all be AI first. The builders are going to have the time of their lives, but if you don't love building stuff, you're in trouble.

这对产品行业来说是一个完全的文艺复兴，但它伴随着很多附加条件。在接下来的12到24个月内，我们会看到大规模的人员裁减，然后大规模的重新招聘。一家公司可能会裁减30,000人，然后招聘8,000人，但这8,000人都会是AI-first的。建设者会迎来他们人生中最好的时光，但如果你不热爱打造产品，你就麻烦了。

[0:56] Lenny

What are some things that people should do to thrive in this future that is emerging?

那么人们应该做些什么来在这个新兴的未来中蓬勃发展呢？

[1:01] Nikhyl

You have to find ability to increase pace. You got to find that reserve. The next 2 years requires a lot of fire in the belly.

你必须要学会加快速度。你要找到那种动力。接下来的两年需要很强的意志力。

[1:11] Lenny

Today my guest is Nikuel Singal. Nikuel is, in my opinion, right now the number one best source of career advice for product managers and for tech people in general. He was a longtime exec at Meta and at Google, CPO at Credit Karma. He's also four-time founder, and he leads the best community out there for heads of product and chief product officers called the Skip community. He also has a larger community for tech professionals called the Skip Coach. And through these communities and his 30 years of building consumer products at scale and also his podcast which I've recently partnered with, he is constantly gathering and meeting with and speaking with top product leaders around the world about what's happening and what's changing in the lives of product managers and tech workers in general. And the answer is a lot. This is an episode that every single product person needs to listen to. and you won't find a more real talk and actionable overview of what is going on and where things are heading in your career and also what you should be doing about it right now. Seriously, do not miss this conversation. Before we get into it, don't forget to check out lennisproduct.com for an incredible set of deals available exclusively to Lenny's newsletter subscribers. With that, I bring you Nuel Singal. Nikuel, thank you so much for being here and welcome back to the podcast.

今天我的嘉宾是Nikhyl Singhal。在我看来，Nikhyl现在是最好的产品经理职业建议的来源，对整个科技行业的人也是如此。他曾是Meta和Google的资深高管，也是Credit Karma的首席产品官。他还是连续创业者，创办过四家公司，他还创办了最棒的产品负责人和首席产品官社区——Skip社区。他还为科技专业人士创办了一个更大的社区叫Skip Coach。通过这些社区，他在消费者产品规模化方面30年的经验，以及他最近与我合作的播客，他不断地汇聚、接触和交流全球顶级产品领导者，了解产品经理和科技工作者生活中发生的变化。答案是有很多。这是每一个产品人都必须听的一期节目。你找不到比这更真实、更有可操作性的关于发生了什么、你的职业走向何方以及你现在应该做什么的概述。真的，不要错过这个对话。在我们开始之前，不要忘记查看lennisproduct.com，那里有仅供Lenny newsletter订阅者专享的令人惊喜的优惠。那么，我为你介绍Nikhyl Singhal。Nikhyl，非常感谢你能来，欢迎再次来到播客。

[2:33] Nikhyl

Yeah, thank you, Lenny. I appreciate uh version two. Uh and all my notes were like Lenny version two. So, I'm quite excited about uh being uh back on the show. You've done so well since the last time that I've visited and uh appreciate the opportunity to to to share with you uh my current thing.

谢谢你，Lenny。我很感谢这一版。我的笔记都写着「Lenny版本二」。所以我对能再次来到这个节目感到非常兴奋。你在上次访问以来取得了如此大的进步，我很感谢有机会和你分享我最新的想法。

[2:51] Lenny

Yeah. So, you were actually one of the launch episodes, the first 2030 guests that I had on the podcast. This was two or three years ago, something like that. And a lot has changed in the world of product management since then. And we're going to be basically spending this entire episode talking about what is changing in the role and the career of a product manager. And what I especially love about you talking to you and hearing your insights is you don't sugarcoat what's going on. You're very real about like here's what you need to know about what is going on. So we're going to be talking about the good and the bad and just like a lot of advice for product managers in particular. to kick things off, give us just kind of the big picture view into what is changing for product managers, the good and then maybe the the scary stuff.

对，你实际上是我最早的嘉宾之一，我前20-30位嘉宾中的一个。那是两三年前的事了。在产品管理的世界里发生了很多变化。我们这整期节目基本上就是在谈论PM角色和职业中发生了什么变化。我特别欣赏你和你分享的见解的一个原因是，你不会粉饰正在发生的事情。你非常坦诚地说，这就是你需要知道的。所以我们会谈论好的一面和坏的一面，以及对产品经理来说的很多建议。首先，给我们一个宏观的视角，PM在发生什么变化，好的方面，然后可能还有一些令人担忧的地方。

[3:37] Nikhyl

Yeah, it' be a lot shorter of an episode if we just talked about what didn't change.

如果我们只谈没有变化的东西，这期节目会短得多。

[3:43] Lenny

Wow.

哇。

[3:44] Nikhyl

I think that says a lot.

我觉得这说明了很多问题。

[3:45] Nikhyl

Maybe I'll start with this. I think that when we first chat chatted, it was like in maybe the the end of COVID, I think the ZERP era, as we called it, zero interest, uh, you know, kind of, um, free money from from investors was just kind of cresting. Uh, we talked about how IC's are now more in demand. We talked about how these first round of layoffs are existing, that exgrowth companies are going to be a struggle. But if you really talk to product leaders that were kind of in that mode maybe three three years ago, they were they weren't very happy. And what I mean by that is their day was largely a day of moving information from one to another. Let me frame the way that my team is presenting the information to my boss so that that person can frame it to their boss's boss. And generally the function had become extremely focused on responsibility without authority. And so that is the greatest form of workplace stress. Now we don't talk about that. We talk about all the stresses that we have today. Boy, AI is going to replace our function, etc., etc. But, but the honest truth is, if you think back, if you've been in product for a handful of years, that was a tough time. Um, now people were being paid well. Layoffs were just starting. There were the industry was huge. It was the biggest it's ever been. There were more product managers, more CPOS than ever had existed in history. Um, what's changed is people are having fun again, particularly product folks, because they're able to build. They don't have to rely on as many people to have impact. There's much more of a direct connection to their ideas and their ability to test and and and connect their product instincts to their customers. And so in many ways, this is a a complete renaissance for the product industry. Uh for a lot of the strongest builders in the group that I'm associated with, compensation is an all-time high. They have more offers than they've ever seen. They see their next job maybe being a founder, maybe being a CEO, maybe being in another function other than product, but being in the sea level. They're feeling like there's more opportunities than ever before. So that's kind of the good. Uh I would say in all honesty it comes with a lot of strings attached. I think that it starts with just being exhausted. I have I've never seen a a industry that's more tired than they are now. Um I mean I think we were tired during co but for different reasons. Now I think uh nothing's constant. There's, you know, once you figure out how to do your job, in the past you would be fine for a decade until you became a manager and then you would be fine until you became an executive. Now, if you don't stay up and the next three months, they'll be like, "Oh, you're you're doing that thing that we we stopped doing that three months ago. We don't do that anymore. Oh, you know, PRDS, well, you know, that's not even a pro. You know, everything feels like everyone's in a state of alert." And I think that in addition now you're hearing right tens of thousands of people are being shed by larger employers that are also hiring and paying triple wages. So like that's like mindboggling. But you know depending on your perspective you might be on one side or the other. And I think that particularly a lot of the midcareer people, people that are like, let's call it in their 30s, you know, life plays this cruel trick on you where you end up having your best most energetic years of your career, your power years of career, because you finally have figured out what you're doing. But at the same time, you may be settling down. You may have kids. Your parents are aging and you for the first time have those aches and pains in your body. You have to think about diet. You can't eat cookies every day. You have to exercise. And so between your health, the family and friends that you hardly ever see, your parents which are now worrying uh because you have to build a different relationship with them. They're becoming dependent. your actual dependence which your kids and then oh by the way your work which is you know will take whatever time you have but it also changes all the time that generation is insanely stressed historically and now they're like hey stay up you know what's the latest in cloud code they changed it this morning I it's it's dizzying so I think there's joy but there's fatigue in a way that I haven't quite seen before

也许我从这里开始。我觉得当我们第一次聊天时，大概是COVID结束的时候，我们称之为ZERP时代——零利率时期，投资者提供的免费资金正在顶峰。我们谈论了IC们现在需求更高。我们谈论了第一轮裁员正在发生，过度增长的公司会陷入困境。但如果你真的和三年前处于那种模式的产品领导者聊天，他们并不是很开心。我的意思是，他们的日子主要是在信息传递。让我用某种方式框架化我向老板呈现的信息，这样那个人可以框架化他向他的上司的上司呈现。整个职能变得极其专注于有责任但没有权力。这是职场压力的最大来源。现在我们不谈论这些压力。我们谈论今天我们所有的压力。AI会替代我们的职能，等等。但老实说，如果你回想起来，如果你在产品领域做了几年，那段时间很艰难。人们报酬不错。裁员刚刚开始。这个行业很庞大。这是它有史以来最大的时候。PM和CPO数量比历史上任何时候都多。现在改变的是，人们再次开始享受工作，特别是产品人，因为他们能够打造产品。他们不必依赖那么多人来产生影响。他们的想法和测试能力与客户之间有更直接的联系。所以在很多方面，这对产品行业来说是一个完全的文艺复兴。对于我所接触的团队中许多最强的建设者来说，薪酬处于历史高位。他们收到的offer比以往任何时候都多。他们看到下一份工作也许是创始人，也许是CEO，也许是产品之外的另一个职能，但在C级。他们感觉比以往任何时候都有更多机会。所以这是好的一面。老实说，我觉得这伴随着很多附加条件。我觉得这首先是从疲惫开始。我从来没见过一个行业像他们现在这样疲惫。我是说，我们在COVID期间也很疲惫，但原因不同。现在我觉得没什么是恒定的。一旦你想清楚了如何做你的工作，过去你可以安稳地做十年，直到你成为经理，然后你可以安稳地做到你成为高管。现在，如果你在接下来的三个月里没有跟上，他们就会说「哦，你在做我们三个月前停止做的事情。我们不再那样做了。哦，你知道PRD，好吧，你知道，那甚至不是一个PRD。你知道，一切都感觉像每个人都处于高度警戒状态。」我觉得除此之外，现在你听到数万人被更大的雇主裁减，这些雇主也在招聘，还支付三倍的工资。这简直令人瞠目结舌。但取决于你的角度，你可能在一方或另一方。我觉得特别是很多中期职业人士，比如说三十多岁的人，人生对你施加了这样一个残酷的把戏，你结束了职业生涯中最好的、最有活力的、最有力量的年代，因为你最后才弄清楚你在做什么。但同时，你可能在定居下来。你可能有孩子。你的父母在衰老，你第一次开始感到身体的疼痛。你必须考虑饮食。你不能每天都吃饼干。你必须锻炼。所以介于你的健康、你几乎看不到的家人和朋友、你现在变得依赖的父母——他们变得有所依赖——你的实际依赖者，即你的孩子，然后哦，顺便说一下，你的工作，它会占用你拥有的任何时间，但它也一直在变化。那一代人的压力历史上是极其巨大的，现在他们像「嘿，坚持住，你知道云代码的最新进展吗，他们今天早上改变了。」我的天哪，这令人眩晕。所以我觉得有快乐但也有疲惫，这是我以前从未见过的。

[8:47] Lenny

wow what a what an incredible overview this episode is brought to you by our season's presenting sponsor, WorkOS. What do OpenAI, Anthropic, Cursor, Versell, Replet, Sierra, Clay, and hundreds of other winning companies all have in common? They are all powered by work OS. If you're building a product for the enterprise, you've felt the pain of integrating single signon, skim, arbback, audit, logs, and other features required by large companies. work OS turns those deal blockers into drop-in APIs with a modern developer platform built specifically for B2B SAS. Literally every startup that I'm an investor in that starts to expand up market ends up working with Work OS. And that's because they are the best. Whether you are a seedstage startup trying to land your first enterprise customer or a unicorn expanding globally, work OS is the fastest path to becoming enterprise ready and unblocking growth. It's essentially Stripe for enterprise features. Visit works.com to get started or just hit up their Slack where they have actual engineers waiting to answer your questions. Workos allows you to build faster with delightful APIs, comprehensive docs, and a smooth developer experience. Go to work os.com to make your app enterprise ready today. So you talk to I don't know hundreds of product leaders regularly run these communities for CPOS and senior product leaders. I guess on balance are people doing would you say better than the last than like two three years ago or is it just like oh man everyone's like like burning out and in big trouble. I think that how people would describe it and how I describe it is slightly different. I tend to be more around like when people are doing better I think they have more choice and they're longterm going to be happier from that perspective. I think people that are at the top of their game are doing much better for the reasons I mentioned. They're just more interested in their jobs. I think that they're more stressed, but I think they're stressed because they wish they had more time to feed the LLM at night, which is a different form of stress than the stress that they experienced in the past, which is I don't know if my point or my team is going to get through the the malaise of decisioning that exists here. So, I think that people are doing better. However, I think our industry is very much in stress. I think that on average, people even if they're doing well, they feel more stressed because they worry they're either not keeping up or they worry that this industry is going to change and it's going to essentially they'll be roadkill along that way. And so that has a lot to do with, you know, people are not, you know, generally that arrogant and they don't always believe that everything is going to work itself out. And there's a lot of evidence that things are changing. And so change is hard on humans. And so I think that there's a combination of both, but I think the best people tend to be feeling great right now.

哇，多么令人难以置信的总结。这期节目由我们赛季的主赞助商WorkOS呈现。OpenAI、Anthropic、Cursor、Vercel、Replit、Sierra、Clay以及其他数百家成功公司有什么共同点？它们都由WorkOS驱动。如果你正在为企业构建产品，你已经感受到了集成单点登录、SCIM、RBAC、审计日志和大公司所需的其他功能的痛苦。WorkOS将这些交易阻碍转化为即插即用的API，这是一个专为B2B SaaS构建的现代开发者平台。从字面上讲，我投资的每一家初创公司，一旦开始向上市场扩展，最终都会使用WorkOS。那是因为他们是最好的。无论你是正在争取第一个企业客户的种子阶段初创公司，还是在全球扩展的独角兽，WorkOS都是成为企业就绪和解锁增长的最快路径。它本质上是企业功能的Stripe。访问workos.com开始或者找到他们的Slack，那里有真正的工程师在等着回答你的问题。WorkOS让你用令人愉悦的API、全面的文档和流畅的开发者体验构建得更快。访问workos.com，让你的应用在今天为企业做好准备。所以你定期和数百位产品领导者交流，为CPO和资深产品领导者运营这些社区。总的来说，我想问你，人们比过去两三年做得更好吗？还是说每个人都像「天哪，每个人都在倒下，陷入大麻烦」。我觉得人们描述的方式和我描述的方式略有不同。我倾向于像人们做得更好时说，他们有更多选择，从长期来看，他们会更快乐。我觉得处于最巅峰的人做得好得多，原因我提到的。他们对工作更感兴趣。我觉得他们的压力更大，但我觉得他们的压力是因为他们希望他们有更多时间在晚上喂LLM，这是一种不同的压力形式，而不是他们过去经历的压力。所以我觉得人们做得更好。不过，我觉得我们的行业压力很大。我觉得平均来说，即使人们做得很好，他们感到更加压力重重，因为他们担心他们没有跟上，或者他们担心这个行业会改变。所以改变对人类来说很难。我觉得最好的人现在感觉很好。

[11:45] Nikhyl

We're going to talk about of the people that are doing best, what are they doing differently, but before we get there, let's think about the future of where things are heading. You talked about a bunch of the things that are have already changed and how different the world of product management is. What do you think will change further in the next couple years to give people a sense of where things are heading? Yeah, I I had this uh this meetup uh last Thursday and it was a fun meetup. You know, I have a group of about 125 heads of products and we tend to gather once a month in San Francisco and during this meetup, you know, we took an approach where lots of people were building things for their own companies or on their own to help themselves with productivity. And so we said, hey, why don't we do a showand tell? why don't we just have you if you're ahead of product just show kind of things that are interesting that are worth worth uh explaining and so we had a startup go up and and show what they're doing and then we had some midsize companies and some late stage companies and you know what it was a few things that were really palpable um one was there was so much joy in the audience that people were like oh I've been building this thing and let me show you and everyone had their laptop and they were like oneupping each other and they were like your chief of staff does that, my chief of staff does this thing. So that would sort of builds on my point that people are having fun being hands-on. But the second thing is that the way they talk about how product decisions are made, the way they talked about how prioritization is determined, the way they talked about how information moves within the company looked like a completely foreign animal from anything that I had experienced when I was working, you know, a few years back. And I got up on stage and I said, you know, if you think about how we work right now and how you folks are all talking about, you know, using agents in your uh enterprise, how you're using uh chief of staff apps to essentially drive more productivity, how all of you are essentially spending all your time just focusing on judgment and you're spending all your time taking anything that can be obsoleted and writing software around it. like none of that was even in the language, even in the vernacular 12 months ago. So now what is it going to look like in 12 months? And everyone kind of had a pause and they're like, "Yeah, this was sort of unossible to anticipate what this conversation would look like 12 months ago." It's pretty hard to understand where things are going. But but I would say I think maybe I'll answer your question around where things are going in the next couple years based on kind of how I think companies are going to change and how people are going to change. So I think on the company's side I think that and then maybe I'll slant it more towards product for a second. So product leaders will increasingly get paid and be asked to drive judgment and then be the tip of the spear on trying to essentially obsolete everything else through software, through AI, through agents. And this is partly why there's a lot of excitement because just to be very honest with you and you were a PM and I was a PM, most of the stuff that you didn't like doing are the things that AI is really taking a real uh crack at. And so, um, I think that's super interesting. Uh, I think that there's a ton of that change that's going to happen. Some companies are are doing it now. Some companies will do it but within two years I think most of these companies will obsolete all the mechanical parts of building product. I think that there will be 10 to 100 times more uh changes that will be presented to products than ever before because now there the cost of testing something the cost of changing is going to be much much lower. And so when things are changing that rapidly, that judgment piece becomes like pretty much paramount.

我在上周四参加了一个聚会，大约125位产品首脑，我们每月在旧金山聚集一次。许多人正在为他们自己的公司或独立构建东西来帮助提高生产力。我们组织了一个展示和讲述活动。初创公司展示了他们的东西，还有一些中等规模和后期的公司。有两件非常明显的事情。首先，观众中充满了快乐，人们就像「哦，我一直在构建这个，让我给你看看」，每个人都有笔记本电脑，互相竞争「你的首席幕僚应用做那个，我的首席幕僚应用做这个」。这反映出人们在享受亲身参与。第二，他们谈论产品决策、优先级确定和信息流动的方式，看起来完全不同于我几年前工作时的情况。我上台说，如果你看我们现在的工作方式，你们所有人都在谈论在企业中使用agent，使用首席幕僚应用程序来提高生产力，花所有时间专注于判断，把任何可以被替代的东西变成软件——这12个月前甚至不在我们的词汇中。12个月后会是什么样子呢？每个人都停顿了，说「是的，12个月前很难预期这个对话会是什么样。」很难理解事情的走向。但根据公司和人员的变化，我会这样回答你的问题。产品领导者会越来越多地被要求推动判断，成为枪尖，试图通过软件、AI和agent来淘汰其他一切。这在一定程度上是因为老实说，你和我都曾是PM，你不喜欢做的大部分东西都是AI真正在努力的东西。我觉得会有大量这样的变化。在两年内，我觉得大多数公司会淘汰构建产品的所有机械部分。会有10到100倍更多的变化呈现给产品，因为现在测试和改变的成本会低得多。当事情变化如此迅速时，判断变得几乎是最重要的。

[15:52] Lenny

Just to make sure we understand, when you say judgment, what do you what should people be thinking of when you when you talk about judgment?

只是为了确保我们理解，当你说判断时，人们应该想到什么？

[15:57] Nikhyl

I think that it's sort of evaluating whether the thing that we're changing is a good or bad thing.

我觉得这是评估我们正在改变的东西是好还是坏。

[16:03] Nikhyl

I think that it's also evaluating whether, you know, we should change the product in one way versus another. You can't build a hundred custom versions of the same product. It doesn't it affects your brand. it affects the maintainability etc. So when customers are asking for things, when you're trying to think through how do you build something that's sustainable, differentiated, that's judgment and and evaluating whether it's successfully met that criteria, whether it's worth building and worth releasing. It's almost like the system skill that's existed from the beginning of the internet. It's, you know, hey, it's not about the feature, it's around the system that we're putting together, the platform if you will, that's, you know, kind of enabling capability, right? So that's the the judgment of boy, there's all these changes coming in. They're going to happen more frequently. You know, as an aside, because of all these changes, I think that in two years, I think there won't be any more bad software. I mean, this is maybe more of a wish and a dream than a prediction, but I think that if you count in the week in your given week, how much bad software you uh come back with, right? You know, I have a house and it has like 15 different apps that run to control everything from the shades to the air conditioner to the, you know, garage door. And almost every one of those apps are a horrid. They don't work particularly well. They never get moni things break. No one ever checks it. Like all that stuff's going to get fixed because someone's going to basically sit down and tell Claude to fix it and it's just going to fix it. And it's going to fix it. it's going to be more secure, etc. So, I think that that's changing and so people will have a lot less tolerance for for bad software.

这也是评估我们应该以哪种方式改变产品。你不能构建同一产品的一百个自定义版本，这会影响品牌和可维护性。当客户要求东西时，当你思考如何构建可持续和差异化的东西时，这就是判断——评估它是否满足标准，是否值得构建和发布。这几乎像是自互联网开始以来一直存在的系统技能——不仅仅是功能，而是我们正在构建的系统、平台和能力。随着所有这些改变即将到来，我觉得在两年内不会再有糟糕的软件。这也许是个愿望而不是预测，但如果你算一下一周内有多少糟糕的软件，我的房子有15个app控制百叶窗、空调、车库门等，几乎每一个都很糟糕。它们工作得不好，从不被监控，总是坏掉。现在这一切都会被修好，因为某个人会告诉Claude去修它，它就会修好，而且更安全等等。所以人们对糟糕软件的容忍度会大大降低。

[17:47] Lenny

Along those lines, just real quick at a quick aside to your side, uh the prompt I constantly find myself using with codeex and claude is just how can we make the product experience better? How can we make this better? And you just ask that and it's like here's 10 ways we can make it better. And so he's like, wow, these are really good ideas. And then cool, do do the first seven.

沿着这些线，我经常用Codeex和Claude问「我们怎样才能让产品体验更好？」你只需问那个问题，它就会给你10种方式。然后很好，就做前七个。

[18:05] Nikhyl

Exactly. There's going to be like some super skill that's going to run against every piece of software that's in in the app store and it's going to basically go in and it's going to fix them all and then they're going to get released. They're going to be like, "Oh, that this is like just a significantly more consistent, better, less buggy experience and more maintainable." And so that's why there's a lot of optimism, right? Because there's these changes can be done pretty automatically.

确实如此。会有某个超级skill运行在应用商店中的每一个软件上，进去修复它们，然后发布。会是一个显著更一致、更好、更少bug、更可维护的体验。这就是为什么有很多乐观主义，因为这些改变可以相当自动地完成。

[18:28] Lenny

Yeah. Just like it's easy to just to kind of finish that loop real quick. Like so many of these apps are built by engineers that are not the best engineers. They're engineers that, you know, like uh companies hired that don't really care about their software. They're just like this is just like a side thing building this thing that we have just app. We just need to build an app. Let's find someone to build it. They're not like product first companies. And now all of these companies have access to the most skilled software engineer, cloud code, a codeex, and all these other tools. So I I I totally see what you're saying like everyone has the best engineers available now and it's just an English to ask them to build a better thing or build a better app. So that's a really interesting point. It still boggles my mind. You know, everyone's like, "Oh, what's the cutting edge and all that?" I think there's still, I don't know if this is true even today, but very recently there were more lines of cobalt than I think any other language uh out there. And mainframe sales continued to do pretty well. And they're unusually large line item for companies like IBM. And part of the reason why these systems, like, you know, I I think I spent an hour and a half trying to get my Mileage Plus account on United to work correctly with my daughter's phone and all this other stuff. Partly because these systems are so uh complicated, but they're built in mainframes, right? And a lot of the engineers, and this is going to sound kind of morbid, but you know, I think it's true, is a lot a lot of the engineers are are dead. like they literally are passed away. They were written, you know, 10 20 years ago and and like going in and touching that code is, you know, the probably the last thing anyone wants to do so nobody goes in there, you know, it's all downside. Now we can change that. So I'm like very excited about what it means to go in and improve things that people take for granted, right? That that's a big one that that's a bit of an aside. I think that um the other thing that I think it's worth kind of signaling is I think that the way we we the skills that you need to be effective in today's world is a uh is an acceleration of what we were talking about last episode. We were talking about IC's. We were talking about hands-on. We're talking about opinion. Even back then before you know Claude and Chapen GBT and others kind of came came out. Uh, I think what we're now seeing is companies are looking very very um carefully at their staffing and they're asking themselves one, do we need this many people? Did we overhire? And part of the reason is they're looking, hey, maybe we doubled our staff in the last five years. Lots of companies that are public have done that. Did we get twice as much for them? You know, it was funny when I was at Google, um, now over 10, 15 years ago. We used to ask ourselves, you know, I was on an ancillary team. I wasn't in the search or the ads team. We used to ask ourselves like, how many people are really needed for Google to hit their numbers and, you know, there were like at the time 20, 30, 40,000 people. And, you know, if you ask someone who wasn't in tech, you're like, ah, probably like 90% of those folks obviously. And you know the answer is probably closer to like 9%. You know probably you need like 500 people to keep the lights on and to build that business. You don't need 25 30 40,000 people. So there's a huge amount of overhead where companies hire not just because they want to, you know, have bureaucrats because they want to expand, they want to try new things. But I think that there's a judgment day that's come back where companies are like, look, we aren't getting as much for the staff that we grew in the last 5 years. And this AI thing requires a totally different skill set. The combination is going to mean this year, I predict in the next 12 to 24 months, we're going to see massive shedding of staffs and then massive rehiring. Um, but the re you might see a company shed 30,000 and hire 8,000. But the 8,000 people they're going to hire are going to all be AI first. and the 30,000 they're going to let go of are going to be in combination of we didn't get as much for those folks that we needed and we wanted to sort of set the we want to set the uh the destination differently with a much lighter uh payload and that's that's dark that's going to make this uh year and the next two year you know year going to be pretty pretty challenging so I'll transition a little bit to my thoughts on people but I'll pause for a second to see if this resonates with you

是的。这么多应用都是由不是最好的工程师的工程师构建的。他们是公司雇用的，不真正关心他们的软件。现在所有这些公司都可以访问最熟练的软件工程师——Claude、Codeex和所有这些工具。每个人现在都有最好的工程师，只需用英文要求他们构建更好的东西。还有，COBOL代码仍然比任何其他语言都多。大型机销售仍然很好。我花了一个半小时试图让我的United Mileage Plus账户在我女儿的电话上工作。部分是因为这些系统很复杂，但它们在大型机中构建。很多工程师已经去世了。代码写于10、20年前，没有人想去碰它。现在我们可以改变这个。所以我对改进那些人们认为理所当然的东西感到兴奋。我觉得所需技能是我们上一期谈论的加速。我们谈论IC、亲身参与和意见。现在公司在仔细看他们的人员配置。他们问自己，我们需要这么多人吗？我们招聘过度了吗？当我在Google时，10、15年前，我们会问有多少人真正需要Google来实现他们的数字。答案可能更接近9%。你可能只需要500人来保持灯亮着，建立那个业务。所以有大量的开销。公司雇用不仅是因为想要官僚机构，还因为想扩张。现在有一个判断日回来了。我们没有从过去5年成长的人员那里得到足够的东西。这个AI东西需要完全不同的技能集。我预测在接下来的12到24个月内，我们会看到大规模人员裁减，然后大规模重新招聘。一家公司可能裁减30,000人，招聘8,000人，但这8,000人都会是AI-first的。这会使这一年和接下来的两年相当具有挑战性。

[23:12] Lenny

that's uh scary to We're going to talk about what folks listening can do to be in to do do their best to be in that second bucket of being rehired and and kept because there's a lot you can do and there's a lot of people that know they need to change and adjust and they're not doing anything and we want to talk about maybe some of the blockers there. One thing I'll note is I I should have mentioned this earlier. I just did this uh report on job the job market and interestingly as of today at least we have the most open PM roles globally at tech companies uh in three plus years. The last time it was this high was kind of during COVID basically. So there's some good news there at least for the PM world. I don't know.

那很可怕。我们会谈论人们可以做什么来最好地被放在重新招聘的那个桶里并保持下去。有很多你可以做的，很多人知道他们需要改变，但什么都不做。我想提一下，我刚完成了一份关于就业市场的报告。有趣的是，今天我们全球科技公司有最多PM职位空缺，三年多以来。上一次这么高是在COVID期间。所以对PM世界至少有一些好消息。

[23:56] Nikhyl

Did that surprise you Lenny?

那让你惊讶吗Lenny？

[23:58] Lenny

Yeah it did because there's always this sense that you know why do we need PMs? What's the point? We have AI just build stuff and like my sense I've always been saying this I feel like the PM skill is the most important valuable skill of all the skills and I know every role thinks this about their role. It's like no design we sign more than anything now like but but I feel like what you said where it's the deciding what to build deciding if this is good and great and ready and prioritizing I feel like that's what remains. So uh so to me it makes sense. report came out in a fortuitous time because it was right before I was preparing to kind of come on this show and the the three points I was going to make is, you know, builders are going to have the time of their lives. Comp's actually up and the Bay Area is, you know, essentially back in in uh in in favor and I think those three things came very much loud and clear in your report. Um and I think your the question around hey why are product managers doing so well? Why are there so many jobs when in reality a lot of product people that all of us know are struggling to find a role or we're hearing about these layoffs. I think it depends on how you define what a product manager is. And I think that for the first time I think that we did have a dramatic shift in what's defined. We three years ago talked about hey product managers there's lots of arc types. Some arc types are actually more in favor. This was the IC conversation, the builder conversation. Now what we're essentially saying is the the the information mover is essentially going to become a dinosaur. And I think about half of the product people that were kind of that grew into the industry, you know, have that skill and superpower. And then there were a set of people who got into product because they like to build stuff you know and you know folks like yourself who were founder who that was sort of the motivation into joining kind of the industry and then they found themselves into this thing called product management. Those folks are builders you know and those people are the ones that are being hired by your survey. I think those product managers, everybody wants a builder. And I think that interestingly, lots of engineers are builders, lots of designers are builders, lots of uh marketing folks are builders, and I think builders wanted is going to be the big tagline for the next couple of years. And it is so fun to build. I I I'll bet you and this is a prediction that if you had to choose between preparing a podcast and sitting in codeex or sitting in cloud code and like working on your laptop, you would prefer the ladder.

是的。总有这种感觉「为什么我们需要PM？有什么意义？我们有AI就构建东西」。我一直在说PM技能是最重要、最有价值的技能。我知道每个角色都这样想。但从你说的，决定构建什么、决定这是否好和准备好、优先考虑，我觉得这是保留的。这份报告在幸运的时刻出现。三个清晰的观点是：建设者会有他们人生中最好的时光，薪酬其实上升了，海湾地区基本上重新获得青睐。我觉得你的报告中「为什么PM做得这么好？为什么当很多我们认识的PM都在努力找角色或听说这些裁员时有这么多工作」这个问题很好。这取决于你如何定义PM。我觉得对于第一次，我们在定义中有了戏剧性转变。三年前我们谈论有很多PM弧类型。现在我们基本上说信息传递者会变成恐龙。大约一半进入这个行业的PM有那个技能。然后有一群人进入PM是因为他们喜欢构建东西——像你这样曾是创始人的人。那些人是建设者。他们被你的调查招聘。我觉得每个人都想要一个建设者。有趣的是，很多工程师是建设者，很多设计师是建设者，很多营销人员也是。建设者的需求会是接下来几年的大标语。构建很有趣。我会打赌，如果你必须在准备播客和坐在Codeex或Claude上工作之间选择，你会更喜欢后者。

[26:46] Lenny

It is so fun. Yeah. Just like progress. You just make so much fun. It's like look at this thing go. It's getting better. It's getting better.

这太有趣了。是的。就是进度。你只是获得了这么多进度。看这个东西运行。它变得更好。它变得更好。

[26:51] Nikhyl

I mean when I was a PM I used to take a break and go ch and go change the light bulbs in the house. And the reason why I would change the light bulbs is that light bulb was broken, but then I replaced it and the light came on and man was that satisfying because in a product job there is very few days of satisfaction because you don't really have the ability to see something broken that gets fixed. It's just part of the challenge in having responsibility without authority. until now. Now you can participate in the joy. You can create a design. You don't have to wait for the designer and convince the designer to go and actually work through this or to put your stuff on a backlog. You don't have to do that. And so I think that the builders are going to have the time of their lives and I think they're going to be very focused on judgment. I think that they're going to invade other functions. I think there's going to be, you know, when when I started the group five years ago, we had for the first two to three years until we got to about 60 70 people in this community of of head of products, we had one founder. In the last 12 months, as we've gone to about 125, we have 14 founders. 14 people essentially have decided that their next job was not to take another product executive role but to founding CEO is now open to us. I I have one person very senior person on uh in in my group who interviewed for a CHRO position because they wanted a product manager background for the CHRO position. What is the what is the HRO?

当我是PM时，我会抽空改变房子里的灯泡。灯泡坏了，我替换它，光亮了，天哪，那很满足。因为在PM工作中，很少有满足的日子，因为你没有能力看到坏掉的东西得到修复。这只是有责任没权力的挑战。直到现在。现在你可以参与快乐。你可以创建设计。你不必等设计师，说服他们工作或把东西放在积压上。所以建设者会有他们人生中最好的时光，他们会非常专注于判断。他们会入侵其他职能。当我五年前开始这个团队时，前两到三年我们有一个创始人。现在我们有125人，有14个创始人。14人决定不是采取另一个PM高管角色，而是做创始人CEO。我还有一个非常资深的人为CHRO职位面试，因为他们想要一个PM背景的CHRO。什么是CHRO？

[28:47] Lenny

That's the chief HR person in the company, right? So, you would never think that an HR person would be a former product manager, but now forward-leaning companies are starting to say, "Hey, we need someone who can bring this obsolescence skill, this judgment skill, this empowerment skill, this builder skill to the function." In fact, the function might be easier to learn than the other parts of the job. And you know we're seeing that trend that product builders are going to have you know both a broader range of opportunities up and down the stack and it won't be product managers and engineers can become product leaders and product builders and and all of this blurring of the lines is going to take place. I think that unfortunately the flip side has to be mentioned. I think that non-builders and I think that anyone who sort of sees themselves as not loving like sitting down and building something and there may be reasons why and we'll get into why you may not be in a position to to find the time let's say but if you're not a builder if you're like look my skill was never to I'm not really into tech like people say this all the time I'm not really into tech I I just really found it to be a lucrative job it's a you know it's a role where my ability to communicate my ability to move information was, you know, where I ended up enjoying it. I love team building, you know, those kinds of nodes, which by the way, I love all those things. Um, but if you don't love building stuff, you're in trouble. And, and I mentioned about half the people are in that camp. So, we're going to have that challenge where they're going to have to find perhaps leave the tech industry. they might have to, you know, it might be that they um, you know, want to go build a a new business outside of tech, but use some of these AI tools or maybe they they want to find a job completely foreign to tech. But I think that this non-builder piece is a is sort of a mirror image of the builder growth that story that we're seeing.

那是首席人力资源官。你永远不会想一个人力资源人员会是前PM，但现在前沿的公司开始说「我们需要一个能带来obsolescence技能、判断技能、授权技能、建设者技能的人。」职能实际上可能比工作的其他部分更容易学习。我们看到产品建设者有更广泛的机会，上下堆栈，线条会模糊——工程师可以成为产品领导者，设计师也可以。不幸的是，翻面必须被提及。非建设者，任何人如果你不热爱构建东西，你就麻烦了。也许是你没有时间。但如果你的技能从不像「我不真的进入技术，我只是发现它是份有利可图的工作」，你喜欢团队建设、沟通、移动信息——虽然这些都很棒，但如果你不热爱构建，你就麻烦了。我提到大约一半的人在那个阵营。他们会不得不也许离开科技行业，或在科技外构建新业务，或找一份完全不同的工作。非建设者是建设者增长故事的镜像。

[30:52] Nikhyl

There's so many directions we can go here. One thing I want to throw out, it's kind of a hot take and this came from a chat I just had with Amold the head of growth growth at Anthropic. So he's at a growth, he's a PM and he had this really interesting point that as engineers can do so much more, PMs are getting squeezed because they have to stay on top of so many things, so many features, so many ideas, so much doc, so many things being sent at them. And there's this push for PMs at companies to shipyards build stuff themselves. And what we took away from that chat is like the leverage that PMs often have is is a lot higher not spending time coding and shipping but instead just like staying on top of all this stuff. And he's like we need more PMs now. There's so much for PMs to do because engineers are so fast. So there's still need for like prototyping to explore ideas and ideulate and get feedback and align. But he had an interesting take that like I don't want to be like it's better I don't spend time shipping stuff. It's better I do higher leverage work as a PM. It depends what he means by shipping stuff because I think that if you have an engineering team of 50 people building things for your customers and you're like, "Hey, I want to be the 50 first because that's how I get leverage." I'm like, "It's kind of a cheap knockoff of an engineer." If on the other hand, the thing that you're building is ways to stay on top of what the 50 people are are doing when in the past that was building tickets and backlogs and all of the things that we used to do to figure out organizations, manage standups, you know, that's the information overload that's happening. What we saw when the CPO's got together is all of the things they're building are ways to drive efficiency out of their product organizations. They're inside the building kind of development efforts. And I'm not sure that for the next five years we'll continue to build software that way, but I think in the next two years people are going to change the product operating system that they're working on. And we're already seeing companies that like stand up and they say, "Hey, we've fully automated the way we do product reviews. We fully automated the way we do product standup." So to his point, look, if there's 15 10 times the amount of stuff happening, we need judgment to determine whether it's good. These are good or bad changes. And right now, if it's manual, we're cooked. So it's a combination of hiring good product builders with judgment and then hiring increasingly folks whose entire job is to kind of build the internal tools necessary to improve the decisioning but it's not through hiring of humans and building management ethos which is what it used to be in Zerp. It's actually through technology, but it's a totally different way of building software. And that's what gets people excited because they're like, "Wow, if I do this, I don't have to ever do a status report." I mean, that was a comment that was made. I hate doing status reports. So now I just wrote something and my boss is happier because they get more in detail. And at that to me is incredibly exciting, but it is a different direction of what you're trying to deliver than something that goes out the door.

有很多方向我们可以走。一件事，我刚和Anthropic增长首脑Amold聊过，他有个有趣的观点。工程师可以做更多，PM被挤压了，因为要保持顶部的这么多东西。有推动PM自己构建的东西。我们的想法是PM的杠杆不是花时间编码和运输，而是保持顶部的所有东西。他说我们现在需要更多PM。有这么多PM要做，因为工程师这么快。仍然需要原型来探索想法和对齐。但他的想法是做更高杠杆的工作比花时间运输更好。这取决于他的意思。如果你有50人工程团队为客户构建东西，而你说「我想成为第50个来获得杠杆」，那有点像工程师的廉价仿制。如果你正在构建保持50人正在做什么的东西——过去是票和积压——那是信息过载。我们看到CPO在构建的所有东西都是推动他们产品组织效率的方式。他们在构建内部工具。我不确定接下来五年我们会继续这样构建软件，但接下来两年人们会改变他们的产品操作系统。我们已经看到公司说「我们完全自动化了产品评论。我们完全自动化了产品站立。」如果有15倍10倍的东西发生，我们需要判断来确定它们是好还是坏的改变。如果是手动的，我们完了。所以这是招聘好的产品建设者加判断，然后越来越多的人其整个工作是构建必要的内部工具来改进决策，但不是通过招聘人员和管理，而是通过技术。这是完全不同的构建软件方式。这就是为什么人们兴奋，因为他们说「哇，如果我这样做，我永远不必做状态报告。」我讨厌做状态报告。现在我只写东西，我的老板更快乐，因为他们得到更多细节。这是非常令人兴奋的，但这是不同的方向。

[34:16] Lenny

That is such a good distinction and and makes all the sense. Basically, it's uh make yourself scale through software as much as possible. There's a big opportunity and it's fun. It's like you're building your own thing.

这是个很好的区分，完全有意义。基本上，通过软件尽可能地扩展自己。有一个大机会，这很有趣。就像你正在构建自己的东西。

[34:26] Nikhyl

That's right. That's right. I think a few other things that I would just note around how things are going to change the next couple years. I think that adults are still going to be needed. I think companies are going to grow. They're going to grow quickly. I think those that are driving some of these initiatives are are classic founders. And AI is great at supplementing a lot of things. But I think judgment comes in the form of uh a combination of expertise and wisdom. And so I think that increasingly I hear from mind groups that hey I'm attractive to this company because I have wisdom but I stay hands-on. I have credibility with the founder. So I can have a conversation with that individual in his or her language but I have weight to my thinking. I have seen the movie. I have experience that actually would help them as they take this turn. So adults are still going to be important. I think pace will continue to go up partly because people will want to feed the beast the the sort of LLMs that are running at night. And I think partly because there's just such an opportunity to keep moving so much faster. Uh and I think that's going to be dizzying and I'm not excited about what that causes for burnout. Um sadly I think that geography and and actually diversity is going to take a step back. I think that we were very good about driving more bre as we grew the industry. we started looking at people who were from different backgrounds to populate it including different locations. But I think that because the AI wave is so heavily and you know coming from the the the the Bay Area and because companies are hiring fewer folks, they're hiring people that look and act like themselves. So age, gender, I think uh you know ethnic uh backgrounds, all of those are taking a hit and I think that we will have stepped back quite a number of years in the diversity of what we do. And so I worry um I mean this is my personal worry but I worry about that um probably more now than I did in the last 5 years um because I think it's an underbelly of what we're we're seeing and I don't think that anyone's intentionally doing anything but I think when pace is so high the fact is that you know women are having kids and in those power years and and they just don't have the time uh to a lot to spending their nights and weekends and cloud code. And so that's an impact and you know we don't talk about it as an industry but it's absolutely true. Um and then the last thing I would just say and maybe this is this goes into some of the the advice as well is I think that the one of the most surprising shifts we're seeing is you know your brands don't matter as much as how modern you are in your ability to deliver product. In in the past, I think for the last 10 years, it's like, have you seen the movie before? I remember even in this last podcast episode we did, Lenny, we talked about, hey, brands matter. You really need to make sure that

是的。我会注意几件关于接下来几年将如何改变的事情。成年人仍然需要。公司会成长。那些推动这些计划的人是经典创始人。AI很好补充很多东西。但判断来自于专业知识和智慧的组合。所以我越来越听到团队说「我对这家公司很有吸引力，因为我有智慧，但我保持亲身参与。我与创始人有信誉。我可以用他们的语言交流，但我的思考有分量。我已经见过这部电影，我的经验实际上会帮助他们。」所以成年人仍然很重要。步伐会继续上升，部分因为人们想喂LLM，部分因为有机会保持更快的速度。这会令人眩晕，我对倦怠的影响不兴奋。不幸的是，地理和多样性会往后退。我们在增长行业时做得很好，开始寻找不同背景的人。但因为AI浪潮来自湾区，因为公司招聘更少的人，他们正在招聘看起来像他们的人。年龄、性别、种族背景都受到打击，我们会往后退好几年在多样性上。我很担忧——这是我个人的担忧——我比过去5年更担忧，因为这是我们看到的腹部。没有人故意这样做，但当步伐这么高时，妇女在生孩子，在那些强大的年份，他们没有时间花在夜晚和周末在Claude上。这是一个影响。我们作为一个行业不谈论它，但它绝对是真的。最后，其中一个最令人惊讶的转变是你的品牌不像你现在的现代性那样重要。过去10年，品牌很重要。我记得在我们做的上一期播客中，Lenny，我们谈论品牌。

[37:43] Nikhyl

they're personal brands.

他们是个人品牌。

[37:44] Nikhyl

Yeah, personal brands. Hey, I've worked for this company. They've delivered products. They've been at scale. So then people are like, "Oh, that person certainly knows what they're doing, right?" and and you know it's like well tell me about all the different experiences you've had but now if every way of building software and how we deliver product is completely alien to how it was in the last you know 10 years how you delivered in that sort of version one is going to be less and less relevant so lots and lots of feedback from that I'm hearing from interviews is like put you in a scenario what tool tools do you use? What's your judgment? How do you think? It's not about five years ago you shipped this thing. What was your thinking that went into it? And so how modern you are now becomes the career advice. Not did you pick up the established brands? Because what if the established brands is very much working in a way that's not current? You worked there for six years, you come out and it feels like you're in a totally different world, right? That's why I think the next two years and these changes are so profound and and quite frank frankly confusing to people.

是的，个人品牌。嘿，我曾经为这家公司工作过。他们交付过产品。他们已经达到过规模。所以然后人们就会说，"噢，那个人肯定知道自己在做什么，对吧？"而且你知道它就像嗯，好吧，告诉我你所有不同的经历，但现在如果所有的软件构建方式和我们交付产品的方式完全不同于过去你知道的10年，你在那个第一版本中交付的方式将会变得越来越不相关，所以我从很多访谈中听到很多反馈就是把你放在一个场景中，你使用什么工具？你的判断力如何？你怎么思考？这不是关于五年前你发布了什么东西。你当时的想法是什么？所以现在你有多现代就成为了职业建议。不是你是否选择了那些成熟品牌？因为万一那些成熟品牌的工作方式已经过时了呢？你在那里工作了六年，然后出来发现你置身于一个完全不同的世界，对吧？这就是为什么我认为接下来的两年和这些变化是如此深刻，老实说对人们来说也相当令人困惑。

[39:00] Lenny

That is such an interesting insight that the logo like it used to be fancy to have all these logos on your resume and now you're saying sometimes that may hurt you because that company's not seen as a very AI forward company. And second of all, people are looking for just like what have you actually done? Are you actually aware what's going on?

这是一个非常有趣的观点，那个标志——曾经在简历上拥有所有这些标志会很高级，但现在你在说有时这可能对你有害，因为那家公司不被视为一个非常AI前瞻的公司。第二，人们在寻找你实际上做过什么？你真的意识到发生了什么吗？

[39:16] Nikhyl

Well, I was just going to say some of those biggest brands, it's hard to even talk about what you've done. You know, it's like, you know, if you're working at Meta and you spent two years and I managed to make this, you know, piece of this algorithm, you know, go a little faster and by the way, it had a huge impact. And, you know, frankly, it was incredibly hard to navigate the hallways and to make that decision and to find incrementality. I mean, as someone who has worked there, I understand and respect that and that is a promotable, you know, achievement, but it just falls very flat on a conversation where someone's like living in the future and product is now totally different, right? That distinction is the is the thing that I want to just call out that hey that's happening every day right now.

好吧，我正好想说，那些最大的品牌中的一些，甚至很难谈论你所做的事情。你知道，就像，你知道，如果你在Meta工作，花了两年时间，我设法让这个算法的某个部分，你知道，快一点，顺便说一下，它产生了巨大的影响。而且，老实说，在那些走廊里导航和做出那个决定以及找到增量化是令人难以置信的困难。我是说，作为曾经在那里工作的人，我理解并尊重这一点，这是一个可以晋升的成就，但它在一个对话中听起来非常平淡，那个人生活在未来，产品现在完全不同，对吧？这个区别就是我想指出的事情，嘿，这正在每天发生。

[39:56] Lenny

So what you're saying there which is a really powerful point is that the skills that used to be really valued in product managers are changing pretty substantially.

所以你在那里说的东西是一个非常有力的观点，即曾经在产品经理中受到高度重视的技能正在改变相当多。

[40:04] Nikhyl

Yeah. And in fact maybe almost flipped upside down in terms of importance. You know, in some ways, we start our careers as builders, many of us, and then we get taught that leverage, scale, organizing, streamline, empowering, enabling. Don't do the build yourself. Get others to do it. Stop working on the car, work on the factory. Right? That's that's the that is the maturation of our industry. And then you find out that well what if it turns out the scale can be done very differently and all we care about is your opinion and what you build. That's very jarring and that's what we're living through right now.

是的。事实上，在重要性方面，也许几乎翻转了。你知道，在某些方面，我们的职业生涯是从建造者开始的，我们很多人，然后我们被教导杠杆、规模、组织、简化、赋能、启用。不要自己进行构建。让其他人进行。停止在汽车上工作，在工厂上工作。对吧？这就是我们行业的成熟。然后你发现，嗯，如果规模可以以非常不同的方式完成，而我们关心的只是你的意见和你构建的东西呢？这是非常令人震惊的，这就是我们现在正在经历的。

[40:50] Lenny

So let's follow the thread of specific advice to PMs right now whether they're mid-career senior getting started. What are some specific things that you think people should do to do well in this emerging future?

所以让我们沿着对PM的具体建议这条线走下去，无论他们是中等职业资深人士还是初学者。你认为人们应该做什么来在这个新兴的未来中做好？

[41:06] Nikhyl

Change is really hard for us. And I think as humans, we're not really designed to change very easily. Like if you think about it, you know, I was thinking you, you know, about why is it hard for us to change when in some ways change can lead us to much better outcomes. You know, we're almost like told to change less as we grow older. You know, when you're a kid, you fall down a ton. But like, Lenny, when was the last time you fell down?

变化对我们来说真的很难。我认为作为人类，我们并不是真的被设计得很容易改变。就像，如果你想想，你知道，我在想你，你知道，为什么改变对我们来说很难，当在某些方面改变可以让我们获得更好的结果时。你知道，我们几乎被告诉随着年龄增长要改变更少。你知道，当你是小孩时，你会摔倒很多次。但是，Lenny，你上次摔倒是什么时候？

[41:38] Lenny

Not Not often, except my my son loves to pretend like we're falling. There's a lot of pretendful.

不，不经常，除非我的儿子喜欢假装我们在摔倒。有很多假装的摔倒。

[41:43] Nikhyl

And when you pretend fall, it's probably pretty jarring. It's probably relatively new.

当你假装摔倒时，这可能相当令人震惊。这可能是相对较新的经验。

[41:47] Lenny

Yeah. For him, it's so fun. He loves it. But yeah, for me, like such a long ways down.

是的。对他来说，这太有趣了。他喜欢它。但是是的，对我来说，距离太远了。

[41:52] Nikhyl

Yeah. And I think that it's funny because you watch kids and it's like normal for them to reinvent everything they do. Oh, I'm learning to crawl. Oh, now this walking thing, you know, crawling is like that's not for me. You know, it's why kids learn languages so quickly because they are not afraid to make mistakes and they go through things much more rapidly. It's why you teach your kids to learn how to ski early because boy, I you know, I've just made a decision. Hey, I've never been a skier and I'm just like too old to do it. I think that we are trained to find a happy medium and then make as few changes as possible. Find a partner, get settled down. You know, find a job, try to stay. It's a failure to transition to a new job if you can avoid it. You know, that's our entire ma model. And so we create also in some ways a mental block around this idea of reinventing oneself. You know you when you are told to reinvent to when you are told to change your first thing you think about is it really necessary? Boy it seems exhausting. I worked so hard to get here. Why would I need to? And I think in the most inner psyche of some of us, it's that just wasn't the deal. The deal was I did what I was supposed to. Went to school. I worked hard. I got a job. I built the brand. I got to be a manager. I'm making the income. I have the, you know, whatever it might be, the partner, the the the family, you know, all this stuff. You're telling me after all this time I gotta start over? Like it sounds fun. You read Twitter and you're like, "Wow, all these people are doing all this crazy stuff, but in the back of your mind it's like I I just don't know why. Why did we get here? I I don't I don't want to do it. I want to go back to the world where I can just keep doing things." So I think that this block is actually at the heart of the matter today and and it's a skill reinvention and it requires time but time is so hard to find in your power years you know for the reasons we mentioned with so many you know your goal when you're in your power years is to equally disappoint everyone in your life which sounds like a horrible statement but it's true. You have to you you have 6 hours to give, 8 hours to give, 12 hours to give and you have 20 hours of demand. What is your prioritization mechanism? I am going to equally disappoint everyone. Not disappoint group. My parents will not be more disappointed than my kids, than my health, than my family, than my friends, than my partner, than my work, than you know my retirement account. Like that's essentially what your mindset is. It's I need to equally disappoint everyone. Now you're telling me that the number one thing is to reinvent when I'm barely able to manage this this disappointment algorithm. It's quite dark that I think that you know that there's the setup. And then the worst part is these two other psychological factors. One is okay fine. I'll put the week I'll take a week off and I'll go figure out what people are doing and what the latest is and then it turns out three months later that week off was is now antiquated. You got to keep doing it because the target keeps changing. It's not like I went from not having a job to having a new job and then I kind of grinned and bear and got through it and now I'm back in flow. It's like I'm never in flow because I gotta keep doing this over and over and over again. And the the most surprising observation I made is that the the ones that were the best at working in the past, the the ones that mastered the old game find it the hardest to go through this reinvention stage. It's this sort of shadow superpower thing that I talk about. you know, you've the better you are at mastering one system, the less likely you are to sort of recognize the new one because your entire world is like, "This is working to me." And so, the weaker you are, the more excited you are about changing. Hey, what I'm doing isn't working. Might as well change it. But if you're really good, you have no incentive to change. And perhaps even your employer sees you're doing great and the company itself is in this moment. So all of these things, whether it's the shadow, whether it's the exhaustion, whether it's the time, whether it's the fact that the target's moving creates this reluctance to reinvent. But the number one piece of advice to answer your question is you have to have the courage, you have to believe, you have to have the power to essentially say, look, I know the way we work is changing and I need to stay moderate. I need to stay current. I am going to cross that mental threshold and I'm going to prioritize that above all else. That crossing the threshold is the key. And I'll talk a little bit about how one does that. But I think that I mean if there was one thing to get away from today's discussion is every person listening to this podcast needs to find it in themselves to cross the threshold around embracing reinvention. That is the world that we live in now. Damn, Nicole, this hits hard. Uh, I told people you uh you don't sugarcoat stuff and this is this is what we're experiencing now. I am so excited to tell you about this season's supporting sponsor, Vanta. Vanta helps over 15,000 companies like Cursor, Ramp, Dualingo, Snowflake, and Atlassian earn and prove trust with their customers. Teams are building and shipping products faster than ever thanks to AI. But as a result, the amount of risk being introduced into your product and your business is higher than it's ever been. Every security leader that I talk to is feeling the increasing weight of protecting their organization, their business, and not to mention their customer data. Because things are moving so fast, they are constantly reacting, having to guess at priorities, and having to make do with outdated solutions. Vanta automates compliance and risk management with over 35 security and privacy frameworks including SOCK 2, ISO 27,0001 and HIPPA. This helps companies get compliant fast and stay compliant. More than ever before, Trust has the power to make or break your business. Learn more at vanta.com/lenny. And as a listener of this podcast, you get $1,000 off Vanta. That's vanta.com/lenny. What I think about as you talk about this is um I don't know if you saw this, they asked all the heads of the AI labs like Demis and Sam Alman and Daria just like, "Okay, if everybody agreed to slow down and stop this stuff, okay, would you would you do it?" And they all said, "Yep." Which says a lot about just like they're all like freaked out a bit about how fast everything's going, how much is changing. And then there's the reality of but that is not going to happen because the the game theory of it all is it doesn't work. You can't slow down because no no one will actually slow down. Whoever doesn't has a huge advantage. And so I think a just a big part of this insight is just like this is happening and there's nothing you can do to slow it down or stop it. And you could either try to pretend like it's no big deal and it's going to be all right. Or you could, as you said, get over this hump of just like, okay, I need to lean into this and see see what I can do.

是的。我想这很有趣，因为你看着孩子就像对他们来说重新发明一切都是正常的。哦，我在学爬行。哦，现在这个行走的东西，你知道，爬行就像那不是我。你知道，这就是为什么孩子学语言那么快，因为他们不害怕犯错，他们通过学习速度更快。这就是为什么你教你的孩子早学滑雪，因为男孩，我你知道，我刚刚做出决定。嘿，我从来没有滑过雪，我觉得自己太老了。我认为我们被训练找到一个中间地带，然后尽可能少地改变。找一个伴侣，安定下来。你知道，找一份工作，试着呆着。如果你能避免转换到新工作就是失败。你知道，那是我们整个模式。所以我们也以某种方式在这个重新发明自己的想法周围创造了一个心理障碍。你知道当你被告知要重新发明，当你被告知要改变你的第一件事，你想到的是这真的有必要吗？天哪，这似乎太累人了。我如此努力工作才到达这里。我为什么需要？我想在我们一些人最内在的心理中，它就是那不是交易。交易是我做了我应该做的。上学。我努力工作。我找到了一份工作。我建立了品牌。我成为了经理。我在赚钱。我有，你知道，无论如何，伴侣，家庭，你知道，所有这些东西。你告诉我在这么长的时间之后我必须从头开始？就像听起来很有趣。你读推特，你就像，"哇，所有这些人都在做所有这些疯狂的东西，"但在你脑子的后面就像我，我只是不知道为什么。我们为什么来到这里？我，我不，我不想做。我想回到我可以继续做事的世界。"所以我认为这个障碍实际上是今天问题的核心，这是一个技能重新发明，它需要时间，但时间在你的权力年是如此难以找到。你知道，出于我们提到的原因，有很多，你知道，当你处于权力年时，你的目标是同样地让你生活中的每个人失望。这听起来像是一个可怕的声明，但这是真的。你有你有6小时给，8小时给，12小时给，你有20小时的需求。你的优先级机制是什么？我将同样地让每个人失望。不是让一个群体失望。我的父母不会比我的孩子、我的健康、我的家人、我的朋友、我的伴侣、我的工作、你知道我的退休账户更失望。就像那基本上就是你的心态。这是我需要同样地让每个人失望。现在你告诉我第一件事是重新发明，当我几乎不能管理这个失望算法时。这是相当黑暗的，我认为，你知道，有设置。然后最糟糕的部分是这两个其他心理因素。一是好吧没关系。我将休息一周，我将去弄清楚人们在做什么以及最新的是什么，然后三个月后事实证明那一周现在已经过时了。你必须继续做，因为目标在不断变化。这不像我从没有工作到有新工作，然后我有点咬牙坚持，现在我又回到了心流。就像我从未处于心流状态，因为我必须一遍又一遍地继续做这个。最令人惊讶的观察是过去最擅长工作的人，掌握了旧游戏的人发现这个重新发明阶段最难。这是我谈论的这种影子超级大国的事情。你知道，你越好地掌握一个系统，你就越不可能识别新系统，因为你的整个世界就像，"这对我有效。"所以，你越弱，你就越兴奋地改变。嘿，我在做的事情不起作用。反正可能改变它。但如果你真的很好，你就没有改变的动力。也许甚至你的雇主看到你做得很好，公司本身处于这一刻。所以所有这些事情，无论是影子，无论是疲惫，无论是时间，无论是目标在移动的事实都会产生这种不愿重新发明的状态。但对你的问题的第一条建议是你必须有勇气，你必须相信，你必须有权力来本质上说，看，我知道我们工作的方式正在改变，我需要保持最新。我需要保持现代。我将跨越那个心理门槛，我将把它优先于一切。跨越门槛是关键。我会稍微谈一下人是如何做到这一点的。但我认为这意味着如果从今天的讨论中有一件事要收获的话就是这个播客的每个听众都需要在自己心里找到跨越拥抱重新发明的门槛的力量。这就是我们现在所处的世界。天哪，Nikhyl，这打击很深。呃，我告诉人们你呃你不粉饰东西，这就是我们现在正在经历的。我非常兴奋能告诉你这一季的赞助商Vanta。Vanta帮助包括Cursor、Ramp、Duolingo、Snowflake和Atlassian在内的15000多家公司赢得并证明与客户的信任。由于AI，团队正在以前所未有的速度构建和发布产品。但结果是，引入到你的产品和业务中的风险比以往任何时候都要高。我交谈过的每一位安全领导人都感到保护他们的组织、他们的业务以及顺便说一下客户数据的负担在增加。因为事情变化太快，他们不断地做出反应，不得不猜测优先事项，并使用过时的解决方案。Vanta通过包括SOC 2、ISO 27001和HIPAA在内的35多个安全和隐私框架自动化合规性和风险管理。这帮助公司快速变得合规并保持合规。比以往任何时候，信任都有能力使你的业务成败。在vanta.com/lenny上了解更多信息。作为这个播客的听众，你将获得1000美元的Vanta优惠。那是vanta.com/lenny。我认为的是，当你说到这个的时候，嗯，我不知道你是否看到了这个，他们问了所有AI实验室的负责人，比如Demis和Sam Altman和Daria，就像，"好的，如果每个人都同意放慢速度并停止这个东西，好的，你会这样做吗？"他们都说，"是的。"这说了很多关于他们都对一切发生的速度有点吓坏了，有多少东西在改变。然后有现实，但这不会发生，因为博弈论中的所有东西都是这样。你不能放慢速度，因为没有人真的会放慢速度。谁没有放慢速度有巨大的优势。所以我认为这个洞察的一大部分就是这正在发生，你无法做任何事情来放慢或停止它。你可以要么试图假装这不是什么大事，它会没事的。或者你可以像你说的那样，克服这个恐惧到喜悦的障碍，好吧，我需要靠近这个并看看我能做什么。

[49:36] Nikhyl

Well, and and maybe there's a baby version of this that perhaps provides a bit more kind of soloulless and optimism. A baby version of this is that you know the way that people did let's call it product management back in the day when HP and Cisco and AMD and these other companies built products that were you know physical hardware they had long engineering cycles. There is a discipline called product management that was birthed and that discipline had a very very specific uh very structured way of working that was essentially imploded when the internet companies came along and Google for one built the APM program because they felt like hey this product thing that exists in the market isn't really what we need and we're not seeing success and In fact, we're going to just train from the beginning this new breed. And you know, that then birthed a lot of the current product managers. Microsoft and Meta and other big employers started to kind of create a new new version. And for the first few years, there was it was very jarring because everything that they did that they call product management resembled old product management pretty much in name only. And there wasn't like you go to become a business school uh you know you get a business school degree and all of a sudden you're a product manager. You would have to work you have to build some expertise then you'd have to come in and help organize and collaborate and all this other good stuff. The next couple years are going to be like that where you know every three months we're going to have more agents different forms of judgment. They're blurring the lines on what the the role and responsibility people from different backgrounds coming in. people leaving the it's going to be chaos. But as a couple of years go by, things will settle. Companies will be built a certain way. And it won't be that you'll continue to change the way you're working. You'll have reached some form of optimization. We're just not in that optimization in any way, shape, or form right now. And so the speed of iteration and how you think about look, my job is not to move information. My job is to evaluate. you know, I have to think through what is success look like, whether this makes sense for the system. It's a totally different skill. But after a couple years, there's going to be some routinness to it. There's going to be some training. There's going to be consistency. The job you had next is going to look like the previous job. Lots of this is so all I'm making a point is that you need to cross the threshold to stay modern because things are changing. But I I don't want to send the point that for the next 30 years you're going to be on this merit round that's going to spin faster and faster and faster and then you're just going to have to run off the mer round and go vomit in the corner. That's not at all what I'm suggesting. I'm just saying that right now is the moment when if you love building, you have to stay current because you will be happier and you'll be more relevant. And if you don't love building, you have to recognize the industry is moving away from you. That is the key point and and I don't think there's a person that's looking at the current way of building product. I don't think there's a person that's been on this podcast that would disagree with that statement.

好吧，也许还有一个婴儿版本的这个可能提供更多的灵魂和乐观。这个婴儿版本是，你知道，人们在过去进行产品管理的方式，让我们称之为，当HP、Cisco和AMD以及这些其他公司构建了你知道物理硬件的产品，他们有很长的工程周期。有一个叫产品管理的学科被创造出来，这个学科有一个非常非常特定的呃非常结构化的工作方式，基本上被互联网公司来临时摧毁了。Google首先创建了APM项目，因为他们觉得嘿这个市场中存在的产品东西并不是我们真正需要的，我们没有看到成功。事实上，我们将从一开始就训练这个新的品种。而你知道，那然后产生了很多目前的产品经理。微软和Meta以及其他大雇主开始有点创建一个新的新版本。在最初的几年里，有这是非常令人震惊的，因为他们所做的所有事情，他们称之为产品管理，在名字上几乎都与旧产品管理相似。而且这不像你去成为一个商学院呃你知道你获得商学院学位，突然你就成为了产品经理。你必须工作，你必须建立一些专业知识，然后你必须进来帮助组织和协作和所有这些其他好的东西。接下来的几年会像这样，你知道每三个月我们将看到越来越多的代理，不同形式的判断。他们在模糊线条，关于角色和责任，来自不同背景的人进来。人们离开了，这将是混乱。但当几年过去了，事情会平息。公司将以某种方式建立。这不会是你继续改变你的工作方式。你将达到某种形式的优化。我们现在根本不在那种优化中，无论如何。所以迭代的速度和你如何思考，看，我的工作不是移动信息。我的工作是评估。你知道，我必须思考成功会是什么样子，这对系统是否有意义。这是一个完全不同的技能。但在几年之后，将会有一些例行公事。将会有一些培训。将会有一致性。你下一个拥有的工作将看起来像前一个工作。很多这些都是如此，所以我做出的观点是你需要跨越门槛以保持现代，因为事情在改变。但我不想发出这样的观点，即在接下来的30年里你将在这个旋转越来越快的旋转木马上，然后你只是要不得不跑下旋转木马，去角落里呕吐。这根本不是我在暗示的。我只是在说现在是时刻，如果你喜欢建造，你必须保持最新，因为你会更高兴，你会更相关。而如果你不喜欢建造，你必须认识到这个行业在远离你。这是关键点，我认为没有看到当前构建产品的方式的人。我认为没有一个曾经在这个播客上的人会不同意那个声明。

[52:53] Lenny

That is a really empowering point to make there that this is not forever that it's a couple years potentially maybe I don't know could be a little bit longer but it's not a forever thing where you have to do this you have to lock in and and sacrifice forever. It's a this is the moment to to get on the rocket to get on the ship. I don't know synonymous the boat whatever metaphor you want to use

这是一个非常赋权的观点，就是这不会永远如此，可能是几年，也许我不知道可能会长一点，但这不是一个永久的事情，你必须锁定并永远牺牲。这是这个时刻，登上火箭，登上船。我不知道同义词、小船，随便什么隐喻你想用。

[53:15] Nikhyl

whatever transportation

随便什么交通工具。

[53:17] Lenny

so I think that makes that would make me feel better I think the other like I don't know the the good again just to remind people like this you know there's it sucks to have to change the good as you shared earlier comp has never been higher there's a lot of open roles uh people that are embracing this are having a lot of fun like you're like most PMs are sitting there all day waiting waiting for stuff to happen, waiting for meetings and approvals and all this alignment and all this PR reviews and now it's like you can ship stuff so often like there's so much

所以我认为这会让我感觉好一点。我认为另一个像我不知道好吧，再次提醒人们，就像你知道有这个，这很糟糕必须改变，好的已经从未如此高。有很多开放的角色，呃，正在拥抱这个的人正在有很多乐趣。就像你，就像大多数PM坐在那里整天等待，等待事物发生，等待会议和批准以及所有这个对齐和所有这个PR评论。现在就像你可以如此频繁地发布东西，就像有很多。

[53:48] Lenny

good that is happening. Maybe just remind us again of anything else there just to inspire people to like okay this is working. I think let's go to the individual you're describing. There's someone who's sitting who's uh really afraid who's a builder who's like, man, my job is changing so rapidly and I'm so nervous and I have to think through what's my career going to look like? But I tend to ask the question like, do you really love your day? Like if you put green, yellow, and red next to the meetings you had and did that for a week and then we looked at the color chart, I'll bet you the vast majority of of PMs that are in a product organization, they show mostly yellow and red. And I'm telling you, the ones that are moving into more of this build mode, it's mostly green and yellow. and and and and that yet most of them are sitting very very afraid feeling stuck. So what I'm suggesting is how do you then transition mentally and then physically into a moment of going from this moment of fear and being on the sidelines to being in the game. What I have noticed, and this is sort of a big kind of surprise to me, is there is a moment where they experience the first joy in using the new tools. Everyone has a story and it's always different, but it's super personal. It's going to be like, "Oh, I was doing it a certain way and then all of a sudden I built this thing." And oftentimes it's like my partner and I use this app that I built or I built a chief of staff app to keep track of my inbox or I now manage, you know, the lights in my house using this thing. and it's some silly thing and usually accompanies with the story like and I stayed up all night or I spent a bunch of time talking to my friends or or or or hacking away or I just spent time talking to Claude about it. You know, even my wife has a story about how she has this business that she's thinking through and she went from using the AIS to, you know, do business plan to actually do test market and everyone has this moment of joy and then they're like hooked. It's like a they're they caught a bug and at that moment is when they cross the threshold between fear to joy. And joy is the biggest antidote to burnout. And it creates opportunity because the moment you have joy, the moment it doesn't feel like work. And I think most product management feels like work if you're not building. And we are now moving into a world where product management will be building and joy, not work. So you just need to find a path to get there. And the moment you do your the rest of your human psyche creates time, doesn't feel like you're disappointing others and builds energy because people have more energy than they realize. They're just so exhausted by the monotony of what was defined as product management. And so that is the number one piece of advice is have you found joy? Now there's a class of person who's like none of this is joyful. Like I find the whole thing to be kind of boring, nauseating. I don't really like it. I'm like, well then you're probably not in for the next version of our industry, you know, and and you should be respectful of that and you should be honest with yourself. But there's a lot of product people that are right now very anxious that actually are going to be happier once they cross the chasm and all they need to do is find a way to create that moment of joy. you know, whether that's an app on their side or app your work. And if you're a leader listening to this, you should find those moments of joy in your staff because that's contagious and it gets people excited. And that's what, you know, that's why I like doing what I do. It's like I like building stuff and I caught the bug and, you know, I'm all there all the time. And, you know, I I I try to find TV shows that I can vibe code in parallel to because I want to watch TV, but I want to be vibe coding at the same time.

好的正在发生。也许再次提醒我们其他任何东西，只是为了鼓励人们，像好的，这是有效的。我想去个别你描述的人。有人坐着，那人呃真的害怕，他是一个建造者，他就像，伙计，我的工作变化得如此迅速，我非常紧张，我必须思考我的职业生涯会是什么样子？但我倾向于问这样的问题，比如，你真的喜欢你的一天吗？就像如果你在你参加的会议旁边放绿色、黄色和红色，然后在一周内为你做，然后我们看看颜色图表，我打赌你绝大多数处于产品组织的PM，他们显示大多是黄色和红色。而我告诉你，那些正在进入这个构建模式的人，大多是绿色和黄色。而且并且并且那些仍然坐着非常害怕感到被困的人。所以我在建议的是你如何在心理上然后身体上从这一刻的恐惧和被扣下的时刻过渡到进入游戏。我注意到的是，这有点令我惊讶，有一个时刻他们体验到第一次使用新工具的喜悦。每个人都有一个故事，这总是不同的，但这是超级个人的。这将像，"哦，我以某种方式做它，然后突然我构建了这个东西。"很多时候就像我和我的伴侣使用这个我构建的应用程序，或我构建了一个首席幕僚应用程序来追踪我的收件箱，或我现在管理，你知道，我房子的灯，使用这个东西。而且它是某个傻傻的东西，通常伴随着故事，就像我熬夜了一晚，或我花了很多时间与朋友交谈，或或或或破解，或我只是花了时间与Claude交谈。你知道，甚至我的妻子有一个关于她如何拥有一个她思考的业务的故事，她从使用AI到，你知道，进行业务计划到实际做测试市场。每个人都有这个喜悦的时刻，然后他们就像被勾住了。就像一个，他们抓到了一个bug，在那一刻他们跨越了从恐惧到喜悦的门槛。而喜悦是对倦怠最大的解毒剂。而且它创造了机会，因为当你有喜悦时，当它感觉不像工作。我认为大多数产品管理感觉像工作，如果你不在构建。而我们现在正在进入一个产品管理将是构建和喜悦的世界，而不是工作。所以你只是需要找到一条路到达那里。而当你这样做时，你的人类心理的其余部分创造了时间，不觉得你在让别人失望，并建立能量，因为人们比他们意识到的有更多的能量。他们只是对曾经被定义为产品管理的单调感到如此疲惫。所以那是第一条建议是你找到喜悦了吗？现在有一类人就像，这一切都不令人愉快。就像我发现整个事情是相当无聊的，令人厌心的。我不是真的喜欢它。我就像，好吧，那么你可能不适合下一个版本的我们的行业。你知道，而且你应该尊重这一点，你应该对自己诚实。但有很多产品人现在非常焦虑，实际上一旦跨越鸿沟会更高兴。他们所需要的只是找到一种方法来创造那个喜悦的时刻。你知道，无论是他们身上的应用，还是应用你的工作。如果你是听这个的领导者，你应该在你的员工中找到那些喜悦的时刻，因为这是有传染性的，它让人们兴奋。这就是为什么，你知道，我喜欢做我正在做的事情。这是像我喜欢构建东西，我抓到了这个bug，而且，你知道，我一直都在那里。而且，你知道，我我尝试找到我可以在平行时进行vibe编码的电视节目，因为我想看电视，但我想同时进行vibe编码。

[58:06] Lenny

What's a good What's a good show for vibe coding? I think well I I a lot of the Amazon Prime shows are good. That's not a knock on Amazon Prime but they're built on books. You know these books are like they're like structured and all that. So you know Alex Cross or you know Jack Ryan uh you know what's hilarious is uh and you know when you get older you stop you you remember shows that you love but you don't remember the plot. So one time I just binge watch a season of 24. the show that I loved when back in the day, but frankly, I watched it and I kind of knew what was going on, but I vibe coded the whole time because it was like, hey, I'm paying attention here, but I'm staying engaged.

什么是一个好的vibe编码的节目？我认为嗯，我很多Amazon Prime的节目很好。这不是对Amazon Prime的一个敲击，但他们是建立在书籍上的。你知道这些书就像他们就像结构化的，所有这些。所以你知道Alex Cross或者你知道Jack Ryan呃你知道什么是令人惊喜的是呃而且你知道当你年纪大了，你停止，你记得你喜欢的节目但你不记得情节。所以有一次我只是狂欢看了24的一季。那个我过去爱的节目。但老实说，我看了它，我有点知道发生了什么，但我整个时间都在进行vibe编码，因为就像，嘿，我在这里注意，但我保持参与。

[58:51] Lenny

Wait, let's actually follow this thread just like what's what's it what's your AI stack? What are you using to build? And what what are something what's what's something you built and something you vip coded?

等等，让我们实际上沿着这条线走，就像什么是什么是你的AI栈？你在使用什么来构建？以及什么什么是一些什么是你构建的东西，以及你vibe编码过的东西？

[58:59] Nikhyl

I kind of am pretty allin on Claude these last three months. I was uh for a month pretty aggressive on codecs um because I found some of their newer stuff to be uh especially the with with sort of the highest level of reasoning to be to be quite advanced. I find it hard to switch between tools I try to standardize to be to be direct like the things that I build. I build a bunch of web properties for my community. So you know anytime I see something that I can obsolete in code I try to build code around it. So if you had 100 people, one natural thing you want people to do is to meet each other. And you know, 100 people can't meet 99 others. So it's it's you have to be thoughtful around who's the best person to meet and how do you match people up? How do you make sure that you match people with people they haven't met before? You know, what are their halves or their wants? That entire thing used to be me sitting down and thinking like, "Oh, you know, Jay-Z would really appreciate meeting Annie, but I don't know if they've met before." Now, I write software to do that. I write an agent that goes in and actually does matching. I write an agent to figure out, hey, what are all the jobs that my head of products are hiring? How do we make sure that we uh make those available but then build a mailing list of folks who I think when they're interested in work can get matched up automatically. So like the next generation of recruiting. Um I I think a lot about using AI for content. So when I sit down, um, I have an AI that takes questions from people and then it's trained on my content like yours and it gives answers. But then I read those questions, evaluate the answers and I'm like, hey, this is a theme I'm hearing and then I sit down and I write down when do the LLM and I disagree. I go through and so all of these things are are anything that I'm doing that I think I can you know replicate I try to obsolete myself. You know when I f started my first job I asked the best engineer that I worked with who still is one of the best engineers I've ever met. What what's the what's the definition of a great engineer? And you know I thought it would be like oh someone who's got this degree or is wellversed in this technology stack. He's like, "Well, the best engineer I know is my dad." And of course, this was before tech in that case. And he's like, "And my dad's definition is still with my favorite, which is an engineer is someone who obsoletes themselves from everything they do." That's the definition of a great engineer. And I've taken that to every job that I've worked at. And it's funny because you'll run into people that are like, "No, no, I don't want to obsolete myself. That's my job." And I was like, ah, I think if I obsolete, there'll be a better job for me. What AI has done is turn that, you know, has basically put an A-pop on that. It's like if you can if you can obsolete by just asking the AIs to do this for you. So why I'm saying that is I'm my stack is what can I do to obsolete anything and everything I do on a daily basis.

我有点在过去三个月非常专注于Claude。我呃在一个月内非常激进地使用了其他工具，因为我发现他们的一些较新的东西呃特别是与某种最高级别的推理呃是相当先进的。我发现很难在工具之间切换。我尝试标准化，直接说，像我构建的东西。我为我的社区构建了很多网络属性。所以你知道，任何时候我看到某个我可以在代码中廃弃的东西，我尝试在它周围构建代码。所以如果你有100个人，一个自然的事情是你想让人们彼此见面。而且你知道，100个人不能见99个其他人。所以这是必须围绕谁是最好的人见面以及你如何匹配人们进行思考。你如何确保你将人们与他们之前没有见过的人进行匹配？你知道，他们的缺陷或他们的想要什么？整个事情曾经是我坐下来和想法像，"噢，你知道，Jay-Z会真的喜欢见Annie，但我不知道他们是否见过。"现在，我写软件来做那件事。我写一个代理去实际进行匹配。我写一个代理去弄清楚，嘿，我的所有首席产品官正在招聘什么工作？我们如何确保我们呃使那些可用，但然后构建一个当他们对工作感兴趣时我认为能被自动匹配的人的邮件列表。所以就像下一代招聘。嗯，我我对使用AI进行内容思考很多。所以当我坐下时，嗯，我有一个AI接受来自人们的问题，然后它在我的内容像你的上进行训练，它给出答案。但然后我读那些问题，评估答案，我就像，嘿，这是一个我听到的主题，然后我坐下来，我写下当LLM和我不同意的时候。我通过去所以所有这些事情都是我在做的任何事情。我认为我可以你知道复制，我尝试廃弃自己。你知道当我开始我的第一份工作时，我问了我曾经与之一起工作的最好工程师，他仍然是我曾经遇到过的最好工程师之一。什么什么是一个伟大工程师的定义？而且你知道我认为这将像噢，某人谁有这个学位或对这个技术栈精通。他就像，"嗯，我知道最好的工程师是我的爸爸。"而当然这是在那种情况下的技术之前。他就像，"而且我的爸爸定义的仍然与我的最爱，这是一个工程师是某个廃弃自己从他们做的一切的人。"这是一个伟大工程师的定义。而且我已经把那个提升到了我曾经工作的每份工作。而且这很有趣，因为你会遇到像的人，"不，不，我不想廃弃自己。那是我的工作。"而我就像，啊，我认为如果我廃弃自己，对我来说将会有一个更好的工作。什么AI做的就是开启了那个，你知道，基本上在那个顶部放一个增压。就像如果你能通过只是让AI为你做这个来廃弃。那么为什么，我说那是我正在说的是我的栈是什么，我能做什么来廃弃我每天做的任何东西。

[1:02:10] Lenny

That is super cool. I love I love hearing these stories. Like what I find is the best uh tactic here is just solve your own problem. Think about something that's not great in your day-to-day or something you just want to uh improve and just like and it's like it sounds so easy. All you do is go to I don't know lovable or install cloud code, download codeex and just tell it I want to uh build the dashboard to control my sonus and then it just tells you like walks you through everything you need to explore. And that's that's a pretty advanced thing to try, but it's just like English. Like it sounds like I have no idea how to do this. Like you just tell it here's what I want to do just like a person and it helps you figure it out.

那是超级酷的。我喜欢，我喜欢听这些故事。就像我发现的是这里最好的呃战术就是只是解决你自己的问题。想想在你的日常生活中有什么不太好的事情，或者什么是你只是想呃改进的东西。然后就像，而且它就像听起来那么简单。你所做的只是去我不知道Lovable或安装Claude Code，下载Codeex，然后告诉它我想呃构建仪表板来控制我的Sonos，然后它只是告诉你呃引导你通过一切你需要探索。而那是那是一个相当先进的事情去尝试，但这只是像英语一样。就像我没有主意如何做这个。就像你只是告诉它这是我想做的事情，就像一个人，它帮助你找出它。

[1:02:53] Nikhyl

Well, and I I agree with you. And then I think the question is like what skill do you have to have? Like for a while I was like oh that's a systems engineering skill because you need to be able to like train you know the AIs to go after things. But in watching my wife and how she works and she's not an engineer by any means and she's getting tons of value. You don't even need to be an engineer. You just have to be opinionated on what you want to see

好吧，我我同意你。而且然后我认为问题是像什么技能你必须有？就像一段时间我就像哦这是一个系统工程技能，因为你需要能够像训练你知道AI去追逐事物。但在看我的妻子和她如何工作以及她根本不是工程师，她得到了大量的价值。你甚至不需要成为工程师。你只需要在你想看的东西上有观点。

[1:03:15] Lenny

and know what you want. Yeah. Know what know what good looks like.

并知道你想要什么。是的。知道什么，知道什么好看起来。

[1:03:18] Nikhyl

And then the moment that you get it, it's when the light bulb turns on when it wasn't working before. And now you sit down and there's this moment where it's like, hey, I used to have to go and work to do this, but now my agent's doing this. And then what's the next agent I could do to make my life a little bit better? And that's where you catch the bug. It's such a powerful thought that your job can be much more joyful as a product manager as any function but you know we're focusing on PMs just like if you look at your pie chart today of how much hap how happy you are during the day you can actually be much happier in this future and I think that's hard for people to like really think just realize oh wow okay I can actually love this job so much more I did not imagine that

而当你得到它时，那是当灯泡打开了，它之前没有工作。而现在你坐下来有这一刻就像，嘿，我过去常常不得不去工作来做这个，但现在我的代理在做这个。而然后什么是下一个代理我可以做什么来让我的生活有一点好一点？而那是你在哪里抓到这个bug。这是如此强大的想法，你的工作可以对产品经理作为任何功能都快乐得多。但你知道我们专注于PM，就像如果你看你的派图表的今天你有多高兴，你可以实际上在这个未来中快乐得多。我认为这对人们来说很难像真的思考，只是意识到哦哇好的，我实际上可以爱这个工作如此之多。我没有想象那。

[1:04:03] Nikhyl

yeah and I think that it's because you're staring staring at change. And I think change is such an alarm bell. It's hard to hear the voice that says the thing that you are changing are the things you don't love because change is so hard for us that it's so scary, you know, and I I respect that. So I think that if your listeners are able to sort of understand that, hey, there is a world which is better, but I have to go through the tunnel and the tunnel sucks and the tunnel may mean that I'm going to have to change jobs. I mean my prediction is the vast majority of people that are listening to this will be in a different job in the next 5 years because they will either choose to move to something because they will that company will struggle to stay modern just like we're describing people need to stay modern companies need to stay modern or their companies are going to be shedding and re and re returning off staff and so because change is apparent I think it's just so deafening people are very much gunshy to be uh excited about something that's forced on them and you know let's be honest it's been forced on everyone you know it's not something that they chose so that that's why I have a lot of empathy but when I talk to people I try to dig through forget what's happened and you know why how do we make the best out of it and the best is pretty good

是的，我认为那是因为你在盯着变化。而我认为变化是这样的警报钟。很难听到说你改变的东西是你不爱的东西的声音，因为变化对我们来说是如此困难，它是如此可怕的。你知道，而且我我尊重这一点。所以我认为如果你的听众能够有点理解，嘿，有一个世界比较好，但我必须通过隧道，隧道很糟糕，隧道可能意味着我将不得不改变工作。我的意思是我的预测是绝大多数听这个的人将在未来5年内从事不同的工作。因为他们要么会选择移动到某个东西，因为他们会，或那个公司将挣扎以保持现代，就像我们描述的人需要保持现代，公司需要保持现代，或他们的公司将会脱落和重新返回工作人员。所以因为变化是明显的，我认为那只是如此聋人们是非常不愿意对被迫强加给他们的东西感到兴奋。而且你知道，让我们诚实，它已经被强加给每个人。你知道，那不是他们选择的事情。所以这就是为什么我有很多同情。但当我与人交谈时，我尝试挖掘，忘记发生了什么。你知道，为什么如何我们充分利用它，而最好是相当不错的。

[1:05:25] Lenny

so say we've convinced a listener okay I need to make a change I need to lean into this I need to take this seriously I can't just sit back and hope it all works out Okay. And then they maybe found a moment of joy. They built something that's super cool and just like, "Hey, check this out." What other advice do you have for folks listening to help them be to survive, but just like thrive in this future that is emerging for product?

所以说我们已经说服了一个听众，好的，我需要做出改变，我需要靠近这个，我需要认真对待这个，我不能只是坐下来希望它都出来。好的。而且然后他们也许找到了一个快乐的时刻。他们构建了超级酷的东西，只是像，"嘿，看看这个。"你有什么其他建议给正在听的人帮助他们存活，但只是像繁荣在这个新兴的产品的未来中？

[1:05:50] Nikhyl

Yeah, I like thrive. I I definitely think that you, you know, you find that moment of joy. You have the engineering mindset, which is, hey, I want to obsolete myself on something that I do today. again reduce my the the the less joyful parts of my job is a good starting point. I think that you know you have to find ability to increase pace. You know this is not a job. This is the next two years requires a lot of um fire in the belly, a lot of agency that I know everyone talks about. So, for example, if you were to leave a job and start a new job, you probably don't view the new job year one at the same pace that you, you know, viewed your year five and your last job, you need to kind of bring it. If you have a new relationship, you know, and if you've come off of a long-term relationship, my suspicion is your first year of that relationship, you put your best foot on. This is what I'm asking. You got to find that reserve. You've got to make time. You've got to maybe disappoint others in a way that you haven't in the past in order to create time for you to stay current, find that joy, obsolate yourself from the things that are are not worth it. I think the other thing you have to do is you have to swallow your ego. You know, I don't want a single person saying, "Hey, I was a XYZ leader. I would only consider roles at that same level." I I want people, this is an extension of our last conversation, is not only is it invogue to be hands-on and I see it's kind of a necessity. I need everyone to sort of say, look, if everything's changing, it doesn't matter what we've done in the past, that brand doesn't matter. As we discussed, you have to have an egoless perspective of how to stay current and be not only willing but actually look for ways to even take something smaller in order to make sure that you're kind of going through the tunnel correctly. And then ultimately part of the way we we we swallow that ego is you stay long-term focused. You say, "Look, if the way we build product is changing so aggressively, my job is to spend the next couple years being on the boat that's, you know, leaving the station and going to the new world. Once I get to the new world, the cream rises to the top. I'll take my skills, my leadership, and I'll go through it. But in the next few years, if everything's changing, I definitely want to be, you know, current. And that means you have to have a long-term focus." You know, my property is called the skip. The community and everything, they all kind of come down to this word called the skip. And I chose that word because the best career advice is always not thinking about the next move, but the move after. What's the skip job? What's the skip opportunity? Well, in this world, it's not about what's the opportunity now and what's the journey. It's about making sure that your skip opportunity is saved and you are able to get that high salary. you're able to get one of those premier builder drops and that's the world that you have to have and the mindset you have to have.

是的，我喜欢繁荣。我我绝对认为你，你知道，你找到那个快乐的时刻。你有工程心态，这是，嘿，我想要廃弃自己从今天做的某件事。再次减少我工作中不那么令人愉快的部分是一个很好的出发点。我认为那个你知道你必须找到增加节奏的能力。你知道这不是一份工作。这是下两年需要很多呃腹部内的火，很多我知道每个人都在谈论的代理。例如，如果你要离开一份工作并开始一份新工作，你可能不会以你知道的你查看你的年五和你最后的工作的同样步伐看年一的新工作。你需要有点把它带起来。如果你有一个新的关系，你知道，如果你已经来自一个长期关系，我的怀疑是你那段关系的第一年，你最好脚上。这就是我要求的。你有一个新的储备。你必须找到时间。你可能必须以你过去没有的方式让其他人失望，以便为自己创造时间以保持最新、找到那个快乐、从不值得的东西中廃弃自己。我认为你必须做的另一件事就是你必须吞下你的自我。你知道，我不希望有一个人说，"嘿，我是一个XYZ领导者。我只会考虑那个相同级别的角色。"我我希望人们，这是我们最后对话的延伸，不仅是这样很流行的要成为实践，我看到它有点必要。我需要每个人有点说，看，如果一切都在改变，我们过去所做的事情并不重要，那个品牌不重要。如我们讨论的，你必须对如何保持最新有一个自我观点。不仅愿意而且实际上寻找方式甚至要一些较小的东西以确保你有点通过隧道正确。而且最终我们如何吞下那个自我的一部分是你保持长期焦点。你说，"看，如果我们构建产品的方式变化得如此激进，我的工作是花接下来的几年在离开车站的船上，去新世界。一旦我来到新世界，奶油上升到顶部。我将接受我的技能、领导力，我将通过它。但在未来几年内，如果一切都在改变，我绝对想要，你知道，最新。"你知道，我的财产被称为skip。社区和一切，他们都有点下降到这个词叫skip。而我选择那个词是因为最好的职业建议总是不考虑下一步动作，而是之后的动作。什么是skip工作？什么是skip机会？嗯，在这个世界中，这不是关于现在的机会和旅程。这是关于确保你的skip机会被保存，你能够得到那个高薪水。你能够得到那些首屈一指的建造者下跌之一，那就是你必须拥有的世界，那是你必须拥有的心态。

[1:08:59] Lenny

Something you mentioned earlier was really interesting that in the next five years you predict that most people's jobs will be very different. What are you imagining there? Like will there still be this product manager role? Will PMs need to move closer to engineering? What's kind of like the ven diagrams or spectrum you're seeing of where current PMs may go? Yeah, I I definitely think that there's a world where PMS go to every industry as the what I would call the agents of change because the PMs are the ones that can talk. They're the ones that have the broadest view of the organization, but they look at it through the technical lens. And my hope is that most of our PMs are the first to the tools and hence they're the change agents within their company. So let's just play this out. In the next year, we start to see all these product organizations changing the way they build product. And all of a sudden, the way we build product is identified and really really thoughtful and really far along. And then 12 months later, the marketing, the sales organization, the HVAC company that was bought by the PR private equity firm, the school down the road, you know, everything's like, boy, we are just not up. We're not current. We're going to get obsolete. Who do we bring in to be in charge of this change? Well, you know, this person works in the future. We need to get to future. So, I'm like really bullish that product leaders are going to be like, you know, like those like dandelion, whatever you call it, seeds when you blow it and they just go everywhere. I I have that vision. Meanwhile, I think a lot of people going into product might be coming from design, might be coming from data science, might be coming from engineering because the ones that have judgment, the ones that can talk, the ones that want to stay current, they might be like, well, what I don't necessarily want to just stay in my lane. I want I have point of view as to how this should work. You know, as you said, from a designer point of view, designers may have a lot of those skills and opinions on what it should look like. Maybe their uh platform won't be the pixels or the visuals. They will be the product itself and they can adjacently move into product. So, I think you're going to see this crazy influx and then this amazing ex, you know, kind of exodus and then you'll also see folks that are like, I don't know if I can get in. I know that's a confusing uh kind of set of three changes, but that's explains why so many people have anxiety is all three of these are happening instantaneously.

你之前提到的某些东西真的很有趣。那是在接下来的五年中，你预测大多数人的工作将非常不同。你在那里想象什么？仍然会有这个产品经理角色吗？PM需要更靠近工程吗？什么样的像文氏图或你看到当前PM可能去的地方的频谱？是的，我我绝对认为有一个世界，PM去每个行业作为什么我会称之为变化的代理，因为PM是那些能够交谈的人。他们是拥有组织最广泛视图的人，但他们通过技术镜头看它。而我的希望是我们的大多数PM是第一个使用工具的人，因此他们是他们公司内的变化代理。所以让我们只是把它玩出来。在未来的一年里，我们开始看到所有这些产品组织改变他们构建产品的方式。而且突然间，我们构建产品的方式被识别并真的真的很深思和真的很深远。而后来12个月，营销、销售组织、被PR私募股权公司收购的HVAC公司、下路的学校、你知道、一切都像，男孩，我们只是不是向上。我们不是最新的。我们要变得过时。我们谁带来来领导这个变化？嗯，你知道，这个人在未来工作。我们需要到达未来。所以，我喜欢这样真的看好产品领导者将会像，你知道，就像蒲公英，无论你怎么称呼它，种子，当你吹它时，他们到处都去。我我有那个愿景。同时，我认为很多进入产品的人可能来自设计、可能来自数据科学、可能来自工程。因为那些拥有判断力、那些能够交谈、那些想要保持最新的人，他们可能像，嗯，什么我不一定想要只是呆在我的车道中。我想我有关于这应该如何工作的观点。你知道，从设计师的角度来看，设计师可能有很多那些技能和关于它应该看起来像的意见。也许他们的呃平台将不会是像素或视觉。他们将是产品本身，他们可以相邻地进入产品。所以，我认为你将看到这个疯狂的涌入，然后这个令人惊人的呃，你知道，有点出走。然后你还会看到像的人，我不知道我是否能进入。我知道这是一个令人困惑的呃某个一组改变，但那解释了为什么这么多人有焦虑都是这三个中的同时发生。

[1:11:46] Lenny

There's a a line, they thought they buried us. They didn't know that we were seeds that I think about.

有一条线，他们想他们埋了我们。他们不知道我们是种子。我认为。

[1:11:54] Nikhyl

I love that. We're into a lot of the darker. Speaking of that, there's this hilarious tweet that just came out the other day that I have here where this guy describes the only four jobs that will remain in the future. Uh, so the only four jobs that exist in the future, one is product engineer, vibe coder, PM slop cannon. Number two is security s infra person. Uh, number three is hot people, which is like you know like getting people to buy your stuff. customer service kind of and like people the way they describe remember there are many ways to be no here's how they put it present a easy UX to the world is is that category and then grown-ups which is your

我喜欢那个。我们进入了很多更黑暗的。谈到那个，这里有这个令人惊喜的推文刚刚在另一天出来。我有在这里，其中这个家伙描述仅有的四个工作将在未来中保留。呃，所以仅有的四个工作在未来中存在。一个是产品工程师，vibe编码器，PM产品经理。第二个是安全和基础设施的人。呃，第三个是热门的人。这就像你知道，就像让人们购买你的东西。客户服务有点像，就像人类。他们描述的方式——记住有很多方式没有——这里是他们如何把它呈现，给世界一个简单的UX是该类别。然后长大。这是你的。

[1:12:36]

point of just like adults yeah so

Lenny 正是成年人的特点啊

[1:12:39]

yeah I think there's I I read that and I I agree with that I mean I think the adults ex exist and I think anyone that's the top of their field that can talk and that's that essentially is opinionated and can go broad that's kind of the third point of hot people

Nikhyl 我觉得对，我也同意。我认为成年人确实存在，我觉得任何在各自领域的顶尖、能够表达观点且观点宽泛的人，这差不多就是第三个特质——优秀人才的标志

[1:12:51]

so that's actually that reminds me so am a mole the head of growth at Enthropic made this really interesting point that so much of his time now more and more is alignment as a product manager and we were joking what's the harder alignment problem aligning people in in a company or like AI's AGI and and I and it feels like that's like a remaining and it's part of what you described somebody that can get done a change agent and a big part of that is like what a PM often is doing a lot of their time is align creating alignment internally around what we will be doing what we're prioritizing that kind of thing.

Nikhyl 这让我想起，Anthropic 增长负责人有个很有意思的观点：他现在越来越多的时间是在做 PM 的对齐工作。我们还开玩笑说，什么是更难的对齐问题——在公司内部让人对齐，还是 AI 的 AGI 问题？这正如你说的，关键是找到能把事情落地的人、变革推动者。PM 很大一部分工作其实就是做对齐——在公司内部围绕我们将要做什么、优先级是什么达成一致。

[1:13:25]

Yeah. And I think that if you dissect what alignment looks like, a lot of alignment was getting people the right information, the ground level truth. That problem is dramatically better. That part of the job, frankly, just absolutely sucked. Whether it was the status report or put, you know, I I was on projects where there was like docs that were sent to me and then I would change the dock to then send it to my boss and then that boss would send it to, you know, and it was just like this movement of information where the ground truth was buried in some part of the organization and then there were like all these people that were putting on their spin. That I think is changing. But to your point, now someone has to decide and someone has to have an opinion and what to fight for. And that conversation is now much clearer to have because you know the ground truth. There's less spin. You know, the CEO can literally ask their agent, well, what is the situation? What how is this performing? What does this customer really want? You know, how does this affect the system? You know, is this really something that we want to change the product to enable? So that conversation can happen, but now people can like fight it out, you know, with with with real with real credence, right? And and if you're a product person that that really does have an opinion and wants to make a point, you you have a forum. So alignment won't go away. It's just it's not going to have as much theatrics. And I think a lot of companies that are larger do have theatrics that I think AI are going to remove. And I don't know many PMs, there's some that lived for the theatrics, but frankly most of them are like this just seems like a freaking waste of time. I mean it's so telling that 80% I bet you this is a statement 80% if you truly asked their you know your PM do you really want that boss's boss job? Do you want their day? Not the pay, not the credibility, not the stature, but do you want their backtoback meetings? I bet you most of them would say no. And what I'm suggesting to you is that answer is going to change in the next two years.

Lenny 对的。如果你分析对齐是什么样子的，很多对齐的工作就是让大家获得正确信息、获得最底层的真相。这个问题已经大幅改善了。老实说那部分工作真的很痛苦——无论是状态报告还是其他，我经历过这样的项目：有人给我发文档，我改改文档再发给我的 boss，boss 再发给他的 boss……就是这样一层层的信息流动，真相被埋在组织某个角落，然后每个人都要加上自己的 spin。我觉得这个现在在改变。但你说得对，现在有人必须做决策、有观点、知道要争取什么。这个对话现在清晰多了，因为你知道真相在哪儿，信息失真少了。CEO 可以直接问他的 AI 助手：现在什么情况？表现怎样？客户真正想要什么？这怎么影响整个系统？这值不值得为它改产品？这个对话就能进行，但现在人们能用真凭实据去 fight it out。如果你是个有观点、想表达立场的 PM，你就有了舞台。对齐不会消失，只是不会那么多戏份了。我觉得很多大公司确实存在这种戏份，但 AI 会消除它。我不认识很多为了戏份而活的 PM，但老实说大多数 PM 都觉得这是在浪费时间。这很说明问题：我打赌你问 PM——你真的想要你 boss 的 boss 的工作吗？想要他的日常生活吗？不是为了薪水、名誉或地位，就问你想不想要他那样的 back-to-back 会议？我敢说大多数人会说不想。我要告诉你的是，这个答案在接下来两年会改变。

[1:15:35]

What's really also interesting is as much as this role is changing, engineering is changing even more. And in my what I feel like is that the engineers that will continue to thrive are just are basically going to become more PME because the coding part is now going to be solved and now it's just what should we build? Is this great? Is this the direction we want to go? Is this going to what does success look like? So if you're like, "Oh my job is changing." Just imagine being an engineer right now and how crazy that must feel.

Nikhyl 很有趣的是，这个角色在变，但工程师的变化更大。我的感受是，继续蓬勃发展的工程师基本上会变得越来越像 PM，因为编码那部分现在要被解决了，问题就变成：我们应该做什么？这个方向对吗？能达成什么样的成功？所以如果你说我的工作在变，想象一下现在当工程师该是什么感受。

[1:16:05]

Yeah. And I think that the one advantage that engineers have is they think in systems and they think they think about obsolescence more effectively. So I think that you know when you make a change you have to decide is this change going to be sustainable in the product that you're offering. I think an engineer has an edge there. I think an ed the other edge they have is like I bet you we can build this to be more automated to be some blur. I think those

Lenny 对。我觉得工程师的优势是他们用系统的方式思考，对过时化考虑得更深入。所以当你做改动时，你必须决定这个改动在你提供的产品里能不能长期保持。工程师在这方面有优势。他们另一个优势是……我打赌我们可以把这个建得更自动化、更……

[1:16:28]

mine already goes there. Yeah.

Nikhyl 我已经往这个方向想了。对。

[1:16:30]

Yeah. So I think that every one of us like the product person probably has a little bit of an edge in judgment and communication. The engineer is going to have a little bit of edge in the system scaling and how does this change affect folks? The designer is going to have a little bit of an edge with taste and all of these things will still remain important. And you know, obviously people that have all of these will do better than those that have one or two, but the the industry is more than safe as evidenced by the report that there's more hiring and I think going to grow. It's just different class of individual is what we're trying to communicate.

Lenny 对。所以我认为，产品经理在判断力和沟通上有点优势，工程师在系统扩展和考虑变化如何影响他人上有优势，设计师在品味上有优势。这些都还是很重要的。当然，同时具备这些能力的人会比只有一两个的人做得更好。但从业界来看，很安全——证据就是报告里有更多招聘，我认为还会增长。只是我们要表达的是，这是一个不同类型的人才。

[1:17:05]

Uh the design piece is really surprising to me. The fact that this data show that the number of design roles is plateauing and just how teams are just not uh valuing design as much as you think. Like you would think that design becomes much more important as the number of products grows exponentially that it's like a a way to stand out to build something really beautiful and and and have a really thought through experience and it's interesting that that's not happening right now. Also just I've been thinking about like like there's no world where I'm a great designer. I can't just like use AI and become a great designer unlike an engineer like maybe a PM. I could become a much better PM with AI. AI is knocking like it will, you know, do some cool stuff, but I'm never going to feel like I am a great designer now. So, it's really interesting that design isn't more successful right now with the rise of AI.

Nikhyl 设计这块真的让我很惊讶。数据显示设计岗位在持平，团队似乎没有那么看重设计。你会想，产品数量指数级增长时，设计应该更重要啊，这是突出的方式，是构建优美、经过深思熟虑的体验的方式。但现在没这么回事很奇怪。另外我一直在想，没有世界让我变成一个伟大的设计师。我不能用 AI 就成为一个伟大设计师，不像工程师，也许不像 PM——用 AI 我可以成为更好的 PM。AI 虽然会做一些酷的东西，但我永远不会觉得自己是个伟大的设计师。所以 AI 兴起的现在设计没有更成功，这很有意思。

[1:17:59]

And it might be that we just don't know what to make of design in this era. You know, that might be a piece of it. The other piece might be just like there's product builders and then, you know, product, you know, information movers and they split up. I think that there are pixel generators and then there are taste makers. And I worry that in design maybe the industry itself conflates design with more production and not with taste. And so I think there's a lot of companies that you would talk to and even when they were hiring head of design, they were thinking more around we need more production and great designers are much more casemakers. I think that is probably that bias is entering into the hiring plans in this era that we have today.

Lenny 可能就是我们不知道这个时代该怎么定义设计。那可能是一方面。另一方面可能就是有产品构建者，有信息搬运工，他们分裂了。有像素生成器和品味塑造者。我担心的是设计行业可能把设计和生产混淆了，而不是品味。我觉得很多公司，即使在招聘设计负责人，想的也是我们需要更多产出，但伟大的设计师其实是品味塑造者。我觉得这个偏见就进入了今天的招聘计划。

[1:18:50]

What a wild time we are living through, Nicole. Holy, holy moly.

Nikhyl 什么疯狂的时代啊，Lenny。天哪，天哪。

[1:18:54]

Yeah. Isn't it funny that neither of us are operational? There are days when I'm like, man, am I so happy I have the time to work on this and then other days that I think this is some of the most interesting like being operational right now is quite a ride. And so there's good good and bad and you know co wasn't easy. I mean there was a lot of challenges around you know working and and seeing so much change. So there's always something but this one this one's you know everything's being questioned and you know including how you how you define joy which I I think is just absolutely fascinating.

Lenny 是啊。有趣的是我们都不在第一线做事。有些日子我会想，天哪我多幸福能有时间做这个，但其他日子我觉得这是最有趣的事——现在在第一线真的很刺激。有好有坏，你知道，covid 也不容易。有很多关于工作和看到这么多变化的挑战。总有什么东西，但这一次……一切都在被质疑，包括怎么定义快乐，我觉得这真的很迷人。

[1:19:28]

Chaos is a latter as as the uh little finger famously said. Um NL is there anything that we haven't covered? Anything else that you think is important for people to hear? Any other advice? anything you want to double down on before we wrap up and get to our very exciting lightning round?

Nikhyl 混乱是一把梯子，就像小指曾经说的。嗯，Nikhyl，有什么我们还没覆盖的吗？其他你觉得重要的观点？还有其他建议吗？在我们进入激动人心的快速轮环节前，你还想强调什么吗？

[1:19:45]

I would just say that there's a lot of room to be optimistic right now, but you have to find it within yourself to recognize that there is a small period of change and exhaustion that's required to find that moment of joy. And I just urge everyone to find those reserves to get there because once you do, it's infectious. But the longer you wait, the harder it is to cross that chasm. And so I really want people to feel optimistic and find that moment of joy. But I also recognize that there is a lot of activation energy that it takes to get there. And so my hope is that, you know, you you and there's a lot of people going through it. And so, you know, there's some safety and numbers here, but definitely I urge everyone to try their hand at at rethinking their craft.

Nikhyl 我想说的是现在有很多理由保持乐观，但你必须在心里承认有一个小阶段是变化和疲惫，你需要经历它才能找到那一刻的快乐。我劝大家找到那些储备能量，走到那一刻，因为一旦你做到，就会具有传染性。但你等得越久，越难跨越那条鸿沟。所以我真的想让大家感到乐观、找到那一刻的快乐。但我也认识到到达那里需要很多激活能量。所以我的希望是……有很多人在经历这个。所以……这里有个安全的数字，但我确实劝大家尝试重新思考自己的手艺。

[1:20:39]

And just to be clear, you're seeing many people in the community doing well, enjoying this, thriving. This is possible.

Lenny 就说清楚，你看到社区里很多人在做得很好、在享受、在蓬勃发展。这是可能的。

[1:20:48]

Yeah, it's smiling exhaustion. I see in my community, everyone. And before it was just exhaustion. So, I take smiling exhaustion over exhaustion. Um, but the pace is relentless. I I don't have any uh there's nothing I can say to sugarcoat that point.

Nikhyl 对，那是带着微笑的疲惫。我在我的社区里看到每个人都这样。之前只是疲惫。所以比起纯疲惫，我宁要带微笑的疲惫。但……节奏是无情的。我没什么好说的来粉饰这一点。

[1:21:09]

What a time to be alive. Well, Nicole, with that, we've reached our very exciting lightning round. I've got five questions for you. Are you ready?

Lenny 活在这个时代真是太好了。Nikhyl，就这样，我们进入了激动人心的快速轮环节。我有五个问题给你。准备好了吗？

[1:21:17]

Go. Go for it.

Nikhyl 来吧。尽管问。

[1:21:18]

What are two or three books that you find yourself recommending most to other people? You know, Lenny, I'm not a reader, so I don't, you know, I don't I I I I hate to admit this, but I kind of vibe code instead of most consumption of code right now of content right now. You know, all of the reading I do is like trying to stay up to date and that was a casualty, you know. So, I don't listen to as many podcasts I want to. I don't read as much as I want to um because I have so much information coming from the agents that I have deployed and all the stuff that's going on with, you know, on on Reddit and X and all that. So, I I don't have a great set of book suggestions, not unlike, you know, all your other um all your other guests that are great at this. you know, they they read prolifically and, you know, I I I just don't I mean, I'll tell you, I I I read um I I don't know how much I loved it, and I'll just leave it in here in case people are interested, but I read this book called James, which James is um the story of Huckleberry Finn told from uh Jim's point of view. I thought that was absolutely fascinating because anytime you take a classic and then you look at it through the eyes of someone else and what you realize is that story is quite powerful but you know very haunting and when you read Huckleberry Finn you're a kid so the distinction between seeing the innocence as not only the book was written from Twain's perspective who was quite forward thinking by the way but you remember you were a kid at the time and now as an adult you see the the book from another angle. I thought that was interesting. I don't know if I'd recommend it to your viewer readers but I I thought I always look for things that I'm you know uh unnatural um stories that exist, you know, right in plain sight. So that was an example of that.

Lenny 你最常推荐给别人的两三本书是什么？你知道 Lenny，我不是个读者，所以……我不得不承认，我更多是用代码消费而不是阅读内容。我做的所有阅读都是为了保持更新，那已经变成牺牲品了。所以我听不了那么多播客，读不了那么多书，因为我从我部署的 AI 助手获得了这么多信息，还有 Reddit、X 上的所有东西。所以我没有很好的书单，不像……你那些其他客人……他们大量阅读。我就是不……算了，我告诉你，我读过一本书，不知道我有多喜欢，但我就提一下以防人们感兴趣。我读过一本叫《James》的书，这是从吉姆的视角讲述的《哈克贝利·芬恩历险记》的故事。我觉得真的很迷人，因为每当你拿一个经典从另一个人的眼睛看，你意识到那个故事非常强大但很令人不安。当你读《哈克贝利·芬恩》时你是个小孩，所以关于看到纯真的区别不仅在于这本书是从马克·吐温的视角写的——他确实很有远见——但你记得你那时是个小孩，现在作为成年人你从另一个角度看这本书。我觉得那很有趣。我不知道我会不会把它推荐给你的读者，但我觉得我总是在寻找……不寻常的……存在于眼皮底下的故事。那就是个例子。

[1:23:18]

I think somebody else has actually recommended that book.

Lenny 我觉得别人也推荐过那本书。

[1:23:20]

So that's a second mention.

Nikhyl 所以那是第二次提到。

[1:23:22]

Uh next question. Do you have a favorite recent movie or TV show? You've already shared some VIP coding favorites to be in the background. Anything else?

Lenny 好的。下一个问题。你最近最喜欢的电影或电视剧是什么？你已经分享了一些最喜欢的编码背景。还有别的吗？

[1:23:29]

Yeah, I mean I think everyone's talking about Paradise. I I mean, if you haven't watched the season 1 and season two, it's

Nikhyl 嗯，我觉得大家都在讨论《Paradise》。如果你还没看第一季和第二季……

[1:23:35]

Oh, season two out. I didn't realize that.

Lenny 哦，第二季已经出了。我没意识到。

[1:23:37]

Season two just is almost wrapping up and I haven't watched season two yet, but

Nikhyl 第二季快要完结了，我还没看第二季，但……

[1:23:42]

you know, it's a little apocalyptic in nature, but it's absolute fascinating character drama about how um you know, how people deal with you know, very very challenging times uh and what motivates individuals. The other one that I really like is Lionus, which is on Paramount Plus. Um, Lionus is a story uh really about uh sort of a covert CIA group and how they deal with, you know, protecting security for America and the importance and what it means to commit to a bigger cause. I thought that was a really wellwritten show. So, both of those I recommend. I do watch a return of television in uh and and as I mentioned I I vibe codes to certain shows and these two I don't vibe code to because I have to pay attention.

Nikhyl ……知道吧，有点末世论的感觉，但绝对是关于人们如何应对非常困难时刻以及什么激励着个人的精彩角色剧。我真的很喜欢的另一个是《Lioness》，它在 Paramount Plus 上。《Lioness》是关于……一个秘密 CIA 小组以及他们如何处理美国的安全保护和承诺为更大事业的意义。我觉得那是一部写得很好的剧。所以这两个我都推荐。我看很多电视，正如我提到的，我对某些节目 vibe code，但这两个我不能，因为我必须集中注意力。

[1:24:29]

That's the ultimate that's the new bar if something's great.

Lenny 那就是最高标准——如果某样东西很好的新标准。

[1:24:33]

Exactly.

Nikhyl 完全同意。

[1:24:34]

Okay. Do you have a favorite product you recently discovered that you really love? Could be an app, could be a gadget, could be some something else. My favorite product that I've discovered of late might be um kind of obvious to a lot of folks, but I um you know, I'm not a car guy. So, I'll just start by saying that though I've um enjoyed kind of riding like the newer electric cars, I just I'm not there's a large large number of people that love cars. They love driving cars and you know, talking about cars and repairing cars. That's like the opposite of me. I just want my car to be super reliable. Um, and uh, I've had a Tesla for a really long time, a Model S for just a long time. And then I've had it since pretty much they came out with them. And they uh, my daughter recently passed her driving exam. And because she passed her driving exam, uh, one day my wife said, "Hey, you know, we got to get her a car." And I was like, "We do?" I never actually connected the dots that she's going to need to drive a car. And I was like, "Well, when's she going to go?" And eventually I'm like, "Okay, maybe we should buy her a car when she's not going to drive that much. maybe I should use this as an opportunity to upgrade my car. And so I drove the latest Teslas that are out there and the ones with the the self-driving. And the self-driving works quite well, just to be clear. I mean, I I've have it now for the last month and about 95% of the time I self-drive. But the most interesting thing is I had no idea that I actually have mild anxiety when I drive. That goes away when I self-drive. And I had no idea. And I my my wife noticed it when we were driving up to the mountains one day and it was crazy snowing. And I'm like, "We're going to do it." And she's like, "You are so anxious when you drive." And I'm like, "I am?" Because Lenny, I've been driving since I was 14 years old because I grew up in Kansas. And so I passed the test when you I was 14. So, I've been driving literally for nearly 40 years and I had no idea as I've gotten older that this pressing a button and going places and psycho is just so awesome. So, anyway, the reason why that experience is interesting, yeah, there's the tech and all that. It's just like I look for ways to reduce my anxiety. Anything that causes anxiety, I try to eliminate at this point in my life, and this is one of them. So, that's a cool product for me.

Lenny 好的。你最近发现的最喜欢的产品是什么？可以是个应用、可以是小工具、可以是别的。我最近发现的最喜欢的产品可能对很多人很明显，但……我知道，我不是个车迷。所以我先说这个——虽然我享受新电动车的感觉，但……我就是……有大量人喜欢车、喜欢开车、喜欢谈论和修理车。那对我完全相反。我就想要我的车超级可靠。我有一辆 Tesla 很久了，Model S 很久的车。我从它们上市就有了。然后……我女儿最近通过了驾驶考试。因为她通过了驾驶考试，有一天我老婆说，嘿，你知道我们得给她买辆车。我说，我们要吗？我从没真的联系到她会需要开车。我说，好吧，她什么时候要？最后我就想，好的，也许我们应该给她买辆车，因为她不会开那么多。也许我应该用这个机会升级我的车。所以我试驾了最新的 Tesla 和那些有自动驾驶的。自动驾驶运作得很好，就说清楚了。我现在用了一个月，大约 95% 的时间我都是自动驾驶。但最有意思的事是我不知道我其实开车时有轻微焦虑。自动驾驶时那就没了。我一点不知道。我老婆注意到了，有一天我们在山上开，下着大雪。我说，我们会搞定的。她说，你开车时这么焦虑。我说，是吗？因为 Lenny，我从 14 岁就开车，因为我在堪萨斯州长大。我 14 岁通过了驾驶考试。所以我开了快 40 年的车，我没意识到随着我变老……按个按钮然后去某地……真是太棒了。无论如何，那个体验之所以有趣是，对的，有技术之类的。我就是在找办法减少焦虑。任何造成焦虑的东西我都想消除，在我生活的这个阶段，这是其中之一。所以对我来说这是个酷产品。

[1:26:52]

I love that as a rule. I've also become all in on self-driving. I've had a Tesla for a long time from the beginnings of their explorations into self-driving and it was always just like I don't know this scary and now it's the opposite. Like my wife prefers I selfdrive even though I drive well she just like feels safer when the self-driving is on there and there's and there's this like uh in the actual settings they give you a stat of what percentage you're driving is self-driving and they noted it's since uh 14.2 I think was the release something like that. So that was like the release that everyone started being like, "Wow, it's actually very good now." And I don't think a lot of people realize that it's actually incredibly good. Like I haven't had a single concerning moment.

Nikhyl 我爱这条规则。我也完全拥抱自动驾驶了。我有 Tesla 很久，从他们探索自动驾驶之初。过去总是像……我不知道这很可怕，现在反了。我老婆宁要我自动驾驶，虽然我开车开得不错，她就是觉得自动驾驶开启时更安全。还有……在实际设置里他们给你一个统计——你自动驾驶的百分比——他们指出自从……嗯，14.2 我觉得是那个版本之类的。所以那就像大家开始说哇，现在真的很好的版本。我不觉得很多人意识到它真的好得不可思议。我没经历过一个令人担忧的时刻。

[1:27:35] Nikhyl

This is one of those examples in product where so many people try the previous versions that when you then tell your friend, a lot of people have Teslas obviously in California, but across the world. When you tell your friends, a lot of people are like, "Oh yeah, I tried it. I turned it off." So, I think Tesla's got this unusual challenge of getting people to turn it back on. And obviously, the newer hardware is better than the older one running the newer software. But once you go through one experience, it can be hard to convince someone to try it again. And that's an addage in product and certainly applies here.

这是产品中一个很常见的例子，很多人都试过早期版本，然后当你告诉朋友时，很多人显然在加州有特斯拉，但世界各地都有。当你告诉朋友时，很多人会说，"哦，是的，我试过。我关闭了。"所以我认为特斯拉面临一个不寻常的挑战——让人们重新打开它。显然，新硬件运行新软件比旧硬件更好。但一旦你经历过一次不好的体验，很难说服别人再试一次。这是产品中的一条准则，肯定适用于这里。

[1:28:06] Lenny

It's a downside of releasing early and often sometimes people just have this memory of what it might be. I feel like I feel like this like Uber where you most have to just start hearing about it from your friends

这是早期频繁发布的一个缺点——有时人们只是对它可能是什么样子有这种记忆。我觉得这就像Uber一样，你大多数情况下只能从朋友那里开始听说

[1:28:15] Nikhyl

telling you, "Hey, I'm doing this thing." You're like, "Wait, really? I guess I should try it. Yeah.

告诉你，"嘿，我在做这件事。"你会说，"真的吗？我想我应该试试。是的。"

[1:28:20] Nikhyl

Yeah. I figured Yeah. They ought to just like So, here's a Tesla suggestion for anyone that's listening is Lenny and I should be able to gift 30 days free to our friends of self-driving people that have turned it off because the referral of that plus the endorsement allows people to experience it for free and then they can get their monthly subscription. Great idea. that that uh that viral plus enablement I think is a is is a growth technique that you know they can have for free from us.

是的。我想是的。他们应该就像，所以，这是给任何在听的人的特斯拉建议——Lenny和我应该能够给朋友赠送30天免费的自动驾驶，那些已经关闭它的人，因为该转介加上我们的认可允许人们免费体验它，然后他们可以获得月度订阅。太好主意了。那个呃那个病毒加上启用，我认为这是一个增长技术，你知道他们可以从我们这里免费获得。

[1:28:50] Lenny

Such such a good idea. By the way, I love Mad Max mode where I love that just the personality of the stuff just Are you a hurry mode guy or are you a standard mode guy?

真是个好主意。顺便说一下，我喜欢Mad Max模式，我喜欢那样的东西的个性。你是冲刺模式的人还是标准模式的人？

[1:29:00] Nikhyl

I flip between them, but I do feel like I'm hoping that the new release of the software keeps us in lane. Like I don't love it changing lanes, but it's

我在它们之间切换，但我确实觉得我希望新版本的软件能让我们保持在车道上。我不喜欢它变道，但是

[1:29:07] Lenny

Oh, like we're trying to hurry a little bit. I'm

哦，像我们试图匆匆赶路一点。我

[1:29:09] Nikhyl

Yeah, I wish I could just get it to go at a normal speed, but also don't change lanes because I just don't like

是的，我希望我能让它以正常速度行驶，但也不改变车道，因为我只是不喜欢

[1:29:16] Lenny

Okay. Uh, next question. Do you have a favorite life motto that you find yourself coming back to in worker in life?

好的。呃，下一个问题。你有没有一个最喜欢的人生座右铭，你在工作和生活中经常回到它？

[1:29:22] Nikhyl

Uh, my high school quote in my yearbook still is my motto, which is uh, genius is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration u by Albert Einstein. It's a it's something that um even an early age and you know it's not about genius being capital G you know it wasn't a new year comment it was more like hard work is really what matters in life what's interesting is if you read that quote genius is 1% inspiration 99% perspiration through the lens of AI right

呃，我高中年鉴中的座右铭仍然是我的座右铭，那就是呃，天才是1%灵感，99%汗水，由Albert Einstein说的。这是一个东西，嗯，即使在很早的年纪，你知道它不是关于天才是大写的G，你知道这不是新年的评论，这更多是关于努力工作在生活中真正重要的事情。有趣的是，如果你通过AI的视角读那句话——天才是1%灵感，99%汗水——对吧

[1:29:57] Nikhyl

it's absolutely fascinating because it turns out the AI will do the perspiration

这完全令人着迷，因为事实证明AI会做汗水工作

[1:30:02] Nikhyl

unlimited So I think what we're leaning towards is we all need to we're moving to a world where we're all going to be inspired and it's the inspired individuals and all of us that will that will you know essentially continue to proliferate and don't worry about the perspiration but recognize that it it is the perspiration that that is that is a necessity to make things go. So um anyway I I I think it's an interesting quote especially in today's era.

无限制地。所以我认为我们倾向的是我们都需要，我们正在迁移到一个世界，我们都会得到启发，这是受启发的个人，我们所有人都会，你知道，基本上继续繁殖，不要担心汗水，但要认识到这就是汗水，这是必要的，使事情进行。所以嗯，无论如何，我认为这是一个有趣的引用，尤其是在今天这个时代。

[1:30:31] Lenny

Final question. People may have noticed that we've started collaborating on your podcast and your newsletter. It's this it's such an underappreciated under I don't know seen uh thing that you do. This podcast, this newsletter, it fills such a gap in in the content out there around product building of just like very tactical important non-sugar-coated career advice for people in product. Um, and it what I love about it is it's not AI most of the time in spite of this conversation we just had. It's like very much like here's stuff you need to know uh that is not flashy and shiny AI AI AI all the time. So I want to give you a chance just to tell people about this the podcast the newsletter just what what the ideas where they where they can find it. I started this property called Skip because I really felt that there was a a der of content from operators sharing best practices with uh with emerging operators and the idea was look I had been a founder before. I had been an executive before and I wanted to be in a position where I can say hey this is exactly what I experienced and this might apply to you. And I noticed that most of the podcasts and the content out there were from folks that hadn't spent as much time and operating more time in content. And and I was kind of the opposite. Then I started building this community that I spoke about last time, which was, you know, about 2030 at the time. Now it's over 125 head of products who are all kind of these builders top of their game and kind of reinventing what product management looked like. And our goal is to collectively share our wisdom as operators to help people advance in career. And that probably that calling is probably more important now than ever is everything's changing. Um and so one of the things that we're launching next month by the time that you know we end up launching this episode is something called skip.help where we have agents that have been trained on about 50 of our community leaders. And so you can go and ask a question. It might be preparing for an interview. It might be a question around navigating your current environment. It might even be, you know, how do I build a chief of staff app? And 50 of us, not just me, will respond. Uh, and this is powered by our friends over at Superme, which is a great startup that um that actually by having these agents, you get the sort of wisdom of the crowds. And so th those are the things that I I love. and and obviously there the community itself is a very um curated group and it's you know there's an infinite weight list. A lot of people want to be in it and I'm only growing it slowly because I want to maintain trust but I do have this mailing list called skip.coach where we share our wisdom to a broader audience. So, um I know I've kind of gotten every single domain name that starts with Skip, Skip Community, Skip Shows, my podcast, Skip Coach, Skip Hel, but anyway, go to any of them and you can triangulate all of them. I always appreciate Lenny, your your support and your help and and in and building this property with me. So, it's been it's been great. You know, when I came on, I don't think I had done my podcast yet. And now I'm about ready to hit my 50th episode and you're a big inspiration. And you're you're past 300, obviously. And so, um, you know, it's fun to see, uh, how things change and then some somehow have how things happen. So, it's been great.

最后一个问题。人们可能已经注意到我们开始在你的播客和通讯上合作。这是这样它是这样一个被低估的，我不知道见过的呃，你做的事情。这个播客，这个通讯，它填补了围绕产品构建内容中的这样一个空白——就像非常战术上重要的、不加糖衣的产品生涯建议。嗯，我喜欢它的是它不是AI，尽管我们刚才讨论过这个。它就像非常像这是你需要知道的东西呃，这不是花哨闪亮的AI AI AI一直。所以我想给你一个机会来告诉人们关于这个播客和通讯，只是想法在哪里，他们在哪里可以找到。我启动了一个名为Skip的属性，因为我真的觉得运营商与新兴运营商分享最佳实践的内容存在不足，想法是看，我之前曾是一个创始人。我之前曾是一个执行官，我想处于我能说嘿这正是我经历的这可能适用于你的位置。我注意到大多数播客和内容都来自花费较少时间和操作内容花费更多时间的人。而我则相反。然后我开始构建这个社区，我上次谈到的，你知道，当时约有2030个产品负责人。现在已经超过125个产品负责人，他们都是这样的构建者——他们领域的顶级，并且正在重塑产品管理的样子。我们的目标是作为运营商集体分享我们的智慧，帮助人们在职业上进步。这个使命可能比以往任何时候都更重要，因为一切都在改变。嗯，所以我们下个月要推出的东西之一是当你知道我们最终推出这一集时，叫做skip.help的东西，我们有已经在大约50个社区领导人上训练过的agent。所以你可以去提问。这可能是准备面试。这可能是关于在你当前环境中导航的问题。这甚至可能是，你知道，我如何构建首席参谋应用程序？我们50个人，不仅仅是我，会做出回应。呃，这由我们在Superme的朋友提供支持，这是一个伟大的初创公司，嗯，实际上通过拥有这些agent，你会得到这样的人群智慧。所以那些是我我喜欢的东西。而且显然社区本身是一个非常呃精心策划的团体，你知道有一个无限的等待列表。很多人想加入它，我只是慢慢增长它因为我想保持信任，但我确实有一个叫做skip.coach的邮件列表，我们向更广泛的受众分享我们的智慧。所以，嗯，我知道我已经得到了所有以Skip开头的单个域名——Skip Community，Skip Shows，我的播客，Skip Coach，Skip Help，但无论如何，去其中任何一个，你可以三角测量所有它们。我总是很感激Lenny，你的你的支持和你的帮助，并在为我构建这个属性。所以，这一直很棒。你知道，当我上来时，我不认为我已经做过我的播客。现在我准备好达到我的50集，你是一个很大的灵感。而且你你已经超过300了，显然。所以，嗯，你知道，看看事情如何变化然后不知何故拥有事情是如何发生的，这很有趣。所以，这一直很棒。

[1:33:53] Lenny

So fun. Uh, I was going to ask you to show the domains, which you did. So, it's skip.coach, skip community, skip.show, and then there's skip

太有趣了。呃，我本来想让你展示域名，你做了。所以，这是skip.coach、skip community、skip.show，然后还有skip

[1:34:00] Nikhyl

skippel is their new one.

skip.help是新的。

[1:34:01] Lenny

Skip.help, which is launching around the time this goes out. And then you also have your Substack. I don't know if one of those takes you there, but it's theskipped.substackag.com.

Skip.help，它在这个节目播出的时候左右推出。然后你也有你的Substack。我不知道这些中的哪一个会带你到那里，但这是theskipped.substack.com。

[1:34:09] Nikhyl

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. The skip is the name of the podcast and newsletter and skip show takes us to both.

是的。是的，确切地。skip是播客和通讯的名称，skip show把我们带到两个。

[1:34:14] Lenny

Nail, thank you so much for being here. This was exactly what I was hoping. I feel like people are going to leave this being like, "Okay, I get it now. I understand what I need to be doing."

完美，感谢你的到来。这正是我所希望的。我觉得人们会离开这个想，"好的，我理解了。我明白我需要做什么。"

[1:34:23] Nikhyl

I appreciate that. And, you know, thanks for all you do for the community and for uh all the guests that um that you know, you you still have now probably two dozen of the folks on Skip that have been on the show or that will be on the show. So, thanks for supporting uh all of our efforts. We're trying to help as many product builders as possible and that's a great journey to be on together.

我感谢那个。而且，你知道，感谢你为社区所做的一切，感谢呃所有客人呃你你仍然有大约两打的Skip的人已经在节目上或将在节目上。所以，感谢支持呃我们所有的努力。我们正在尽力帮助尽可能多的产品构建者，这是一个一起要经历的伟大旅程。

[1:34:42] Lenny

It is. Nel, thank you so much for being here.

确实是。Nikhyl，非常感谢你的到来。

[1:34:45] Nikhyl

Thanks, Lenny. Thanks, everyone.

谢谢，Lenny。谢谢大家。

[1:34:46] Lenny

Bye, everyone. Thank you so much for listening. If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Also, please consider giving us a rating or leaving a review as that really helps other listeners find the podcast. You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at lennispodcast.com. See you in the next episode.

再见，大家。非常感谢你们的收听。如果你觉得这有价值，你可以在Apple Podcasts、Spotify或你最喜欢的播客应用上订阅节目。另外，请考虑给我们评分或留下评论，因为这确实有助于其他听众找到播客。你可以在lennispodcast.com找到所有过去的集数或了解更多关于节目的信息。下集见。