Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
01:15:37 · Dianne Penn, Lenny Rachitsky
[01:15:37] S0: You think about for your ... [01:15:39] S1: Oh, man. Well, the question I'm thinking about is just when to get them on some AI-y thing. I have a three-year-old, so it's pretty early for that. But how do you onboard them to this crazy thing? I was at an event recently and a bunch of parents were talking about how they think about AI and their kids. And one person had a really interesting approach, which is keep them on the very early models so that they still have to struggle a bit and not get all the answers immediately. Thought that was interesting, like an open source local model, not Fable. [01:16:11] S0: I like it. [01:16:12] S1: Yeah. [01:16:12] S0: Yeah. [01:16:12] S1: Yeah. And curiosity is something. I keep mentioning Ben Mann, but his answer, actually, to this question has always stuck with me, which is curiosity and also just he's a big fan of Montessori, which is what we're encouraging for our kids. So there's something there. Maybe a last question, just along these lines, something Fiona Fung actually suggested ask you, who was recently on the podcast. How do you stay just recharged and not burnout, being in the center of this crazy storm of AI, as a mom working in ... We're seeing the research work at Anthropic. We're living through the most unprecedented time, working at ... Just being on the outside of Anthropic, it's crazy. I don't even know what it's like to be on the inside. What have you learned about avoiding burnout, staying recharged, staying sane during the middle of all this?
01:17:01 · Dianne Penn
[01:17:01] S0: In 2024, we shipped four models in the whole year or four series of models. And I think we did more than that volume in just Q2 of this year. I think I've been really lucky with the team that we've grown and built, both the stakeholders on the research side and within our research product management team. I think that one of the magical parts about approaching all of this is that it's not an individual sport. There's a sense of radical ownership and team collaboration that, I think sometimes it does feel like a high performance sport because you're in very critical decisions. There's new information about users, about training, and you have to make recommendations and judgments and decisions very quickly. And nobody can do that sustainably by themselves. And so I think what's really helped is having a team that is incredible, who looks out for each other, who the night before a launch, even if they're not the core DRI on that model, will stay up and help the DRI to review the blog post and make edits and come up with better demos and knowing to be each other's extra hand. I think it's very easy, if you take all of this change on your own shoulders, to feel like you're alone and to feel like you have to do everything. But I think one of the magical parts of Anthropic is this ability for us to figure out what are those opportunities to help each other and actually then taking the next smile of mind melding. We called it entering the hive mind. There was an article about this. And I think part of that is just that allows the team to replenish. I was just on PTO in June. It's not just that you can take PTO and you come back to 3X the amount of things to do. It's actually that you can take PTO and know the team can figure out the right things to do and that we individually can watch out for each other. So I think that's a big part. I'm really lucky, just personally. Also, my partner is really supportive. This is year six of me working in AI, so Amazon and then Anthropic. And so he sees how much I just love the technology and what this can do. And that really helps, I think, also from a personal perspective as well.
01:19:45 · Lenny Rachitsky, Dianne Penn
[01:19:45] S1: I love how many of these answers connect. So what I'm hearing here is just working with other people, relying on other people, helping each other out when things get crazy, which is a similar answer you had for just how to find the joy and fun in this work. Just be inspired by other people, see what they're doing, work together. [01:20:06] S0: Yeah. [01:20:08] S1: And it's interesting, when Fiona was on the podcast recently, I was asking her just what's changed in the world of software engineering? And she pointed out it's a lot lonelier now because now we're working with agents instead of other humans. Teams are smaller. People are having all these fleets they're talking to constantly. And so this is just a reminder of just the power of just actual other humans around you.
01:20:08 · Lenny Rachitsky, Dianne Penn
[01:20:08] S1: And it's interesting, when Fiona was on the podcast recently, I was asking her just what's changed in the world of software engineering? And she pointed out it's a lot lonelier now because now we're working with agents instead of other humans. Teams are smaller. People are having all these fleets they're talking to constantly. And so this is just a reminder of just the power of just actual other humans around you. [01:20:26] S0: We're asked to work and make decisions on really big things because you have more scale from the technology. And I think having individuals, having other folks more who can have some level of mind meld with what you work on, how you approach, maybe not exactly every detail, but what are their first principles? What are the assumptions you make? Then helps them back up for you or push your decision and sharpen your thinking. So I think I really try to look for that when building the team, growing the team, hiring. Is this person going to care about their own ego and building out a big org or are they going to care about contributing to Anthropic and contributing to the impact of the team and orienting towards folks who are low ego, team-oriented? I think it's a big part of the sustainability.
01:20:26 · Dianne Penn, Lenny Rachitsky
[01:20:26] S0: We're asked to work and make decisions on really big things because you have more scale from the technology. And I think having individuals, having other folks more who can have some level of mind meld with what you work on, how you approach, maybe not exactly every detail, but what are their first principles? What are the assumptions you make? Then helps them back up for you or push your decision and sharpen your thinking. So I think I really try to look for that when building the team, growing the team, hiring. Is this person going to care about their own ego and building out a big org or are they going to care about contributing to Anthropic and contributing to the impact of the team and orienting towards folks who are low ego, team-oriented? I think it's a big part of the sustainability. [01:21:30] S1: Yeah. A lot of it always just comes down back to culture and hiring. And I know I've heard a lot, just the reason Anthropic is able to move so fast. I remember that moment when something shipped every day of the month. There's a calendar of launches and people were talking about how is this possible? And what I heard a lot is just because everyone is so aligned around the mission and the values, it allows people to make decisions really quickly. Before we get to our very exciting lightning round, is there anything else, Dianne, that you wanted to share? Anything else you wanted to touch on? Anything you want to maybe double down on of things we've talked about?
01:21:30 · Lenny Rachitsky, Dianne Penn
[01:21:30] S1: Yeah. A lot of it always just comes down back to culture and hiring. And I know I've heard a lot, just the reason Anthropic is able to move so fast. I remember that moment when something shipped every day of the month. There's a calendar of launches and people were talking about how is this possible? And what I heard a lot is just because everyone is so aligned around the mission and the values, it allows people to make decisions really quickly. Before we get to our very exciting lightning round, is there anything else, Dianne, that you wanted to share? Anything else you wanted to touch on? Anything you want to maybe double down on of things we've talked about? [01:22:04] S0: This was actually really fun because I feel like your questions actually sharpened some of my thinking around how the thoughts connect. [01:22:10] S1: I'm your real human Claude over here.