LinkedIn’s product evolution and the art of building complex systems | Hari Srinivasan (LinkedIn)

Hari Srinivasan is VP of Product at LinkedIn Talent Solutions, where he oversees LinkedIn Recruiter, LinkedIn Jobs, and LinkedIn Learning. He’s also a frequent guest lecturer at Stanford University. Previously, he served as the CEO and founder of We Created It, which was acquired by LinkedIn in 2014. Hari has a passion for building products, with experience ranging from creating the first U. S. hybrid SUV to developing a No. 1 app and writing a beloved children’s book. In today’s episode, we discuss: • LinkedIn’s unique business model and org structure • How to optimize your LinkedIn experience and improve your chances of getting a PM role • How to adapt to a skills-first talent market • The story of Hari’s failed first product review, and how he pivoted for success • Strategies for building and maintaining complex systems • How to get into product management — Brought to you by Miro—A collaborative visual platform where your best work comes to life | Brave Search API—An independent, global search index you can use to power your search or AI app | Eppo—Run reliable, impactful experiments Find the full transcript at: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/linkedins-product-evolution-and-the Where to find Hari Srinivasan: • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hsrinivasan1/ • Website: https://www.mindofhari.com/ Where to find Lenny: • Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com • Twitter: https://twitter.com/lennysan • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/ In this episode, we cover: (00:00) Hari’s background (05:04) How Twitter brought Lenny and Hari together (06:32) LinkedIn’s positive evolution, and what they did right (10:14) Specific changes that made LinkedIn’s feed more interesting (11:12) Understanding the algorithm and what kinds of content perform best (12:21) The talent solution product (15:46) The shift to skills-first hiring, and how LinkedIn changed their approach (20:24) The open-to-work signal, and the newly released open-to-internal-work signal (22:13) The PM talent landscape, and tips for landing a PM role (24:55) How to optimize your LinkedIn profile to get noticed by recruiters (28:38) Hari’s first product review at LinkedIn (30:38) LinkedIn’s North Star, and how to operationalize the North Star at any company (33:24) LinkedIn’s members-first value (35:32) Building and maintaining complex systems (38:09) The RAPID framework and the Five-Day Alignment framework (39:51) What LinkedIn looks for in new hires (40:51) The latest innovations at LinkedIn (43:16) LinkedIn Learning (45:00) Hari’s product management course (48:19) Advice for people hoping to get into product management (50:40) How to level up your PM skills (51:57) Hari’s creative side projects (55:02) Lightning round Referenced: • Tweet from TheCuriousPM: https://twitter.com/zatin_jatin/status/1658616200560254978?s=20 • The Curious PM on Twitter: https://twitter.com/zatin_jatin • Decision-making at LinkedIn: https://engineering.linkedin.com/blog/2018/03/scaling-decision-making-across-teams-within-linkedin-engineering • LinkedIn Learning: https://www.linkedin.com/learning • Thinking in Systems: https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Systems-Donella-H-Meadows/dp/1603580557 • Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow: https://www.amazon.com/Tomorrow-novel-Gabrielle-Zevin/dp/0593321200 • An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us: https://www.amazon.com/Immense-World-Animal-Senses-Reveal/dp/0593133234 • Star Wars on Disney+: https://www.disneyplus.com/brand/star-wars • Case 63 on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4c9ZKaFtEKweSYOlYvxfvp • E. T. on Tubi: https://tubitv.com/movies/607451/e-t-the-extra-terrestrial • BriteBrush: https://www.amazon.com/BriteBrush-Interactive-Smart-Toothbrush-featuring/dp/B07VLL8QH4 Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected]. Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  It was like March 2020 and we were just watching COVID hit and it was just this heartbreaking kind of moment where in the feed you were seeing all these people by no fault of their own, starting to post that they've lost their job. We started seeing in our data is you had some areas like maybe hospitality was really getting hit, but some areas like customer service that just couldn't hire enough. And you'd think the marketplace would balance pretty quickly. You think, okay, like, you know, maybe these people will start moving to other jobs, but it wasn't happening. And a large reason behind is people are used to looking for certain particular titles and they didn't start realizing other people could do this job. So we made a pretty big push in something we call Skills First Hiring. This was the idea that we could translate people's experiences into a set of skills. And by that, we could help them really start balancing the marketplace with a much different system, right? And so I

• 0:44Speaker 00

  think that the job market is rebalancing, but it's it's being done. The pathways are being done in a very different way that seems to be, you know, maybe a change that holds through these ups and downs. And that'll be very interesting to see.

• 0:57Lenny Rachitsky?

  Welcome to Lenny's Podcast where I interview world-class product leaders and growth experts to learn from their hard-won experiences building and growing today's most successful products. Today, my guest is Hari Srinivasan. This episode has a hilarious story. On Twitter, an account called The Curious PM tagged me with a request to have someone from LinkedIn come on the podcast and talk about how they operate and what they've learned about building products that serve so many different types of customers. I replied asking for any suggestions for who he thought I should specifically talk to, and he suggested Hari Srinivasan by doing some research on LinkedIn. So I reached out to Hari, told him about this tweet, and he agreed. And so here's the episode. Hari's been at LinkedIn for eight and a half years, and he

• 1:42Lenny Rachitsky?

  leads the Talent Solutions Product Team as VP of Product, which is also LinkedIn's biggest business and includes all of the hiring and learning products which you'll hear about in this episode. In our chat, Hari shares what he's seeing change in the hiring market, what you can do to improve your odds of finding a job through LinkedIn, what he's learned about building and maintaining really complex systems like LinkedIn, tips for getting into product management, and some lessons from his own course on product management. Plus, we also talk about how LinkedIn has been able to become a real source of valuable content and a lot less cringe over the past couple of years, which I have definitely noticed and I share in our chat. What a fun series of events that led to this episode. Big thank you to Jotun, hopefully I'm pronouncing

• 2:25Lenny Rachitsky?

  your name correctly, the guy behind the Curious PM account for making this all happen. With that, I bring you Hari Srinivasan after a short word from our sponsors.

• 2:35Lenny Rachitsky?

  Today's episode is brought to you by Miro, an online collaborative whiteboard that's designed specifically for teams like yours. The best way to see what Miro's all about and how it can help your team collaborate better is not to listen to me talk about it, but to go check it out for yourself. Go to Miro.com/Lenny. With the help of the Miro team, I created a super cool Miro board with two of my own favorite templates, my one pager template and my managing up template, that you can plug and play and start using immediately with your team. I've also embedded a handful of my favorite templates that other people have published in the Miroverse. When you get to the board, you can also leave suggestions for the podcast, answer a question that I have for you, and generally just play around to get a sense of how it all works.

• 3:18Lenny Rachitsky?

  Miro is a killer tool for brainstorming with your team, laying out your strategy, sharing user research findings, capturing ideas, giving feedback on wireframes, and generally just collaborating with your colleagues. I actually used Miro to collaborate with the Miro team on creating my own board, and it was super fun and super easy. Go check it out at Miro.com/Lenny. That's M-I-R-O.com/Lenny.

• 3:45Lenny Rachitsky?

  Today's episode is brought to you by Brave Search and their newest product, the Brave Search API, an independent global search index you can use to power your search or AI apps. If your work involves AI, then you know how important new data is to train your LLMs and to power your AI applications. You might be building an incredible AI product, but if you're using the same data sets as your competitors to train your models, you don't have much of an advantage. Brave Search is the fastest growing search engine since Bing, and it's 100% independent from the big tech companies. Its index features billions of pages of high-quality data from real humans, and it's constantly updated thanks to being the default search engine in the Brave browser. If you're building products with search capabilities, you're probably experiencing

• 4:30Lenny Rachitsky?

  soaring API costs or lack of viable global alternatives to Bing or Google. It's only going to become harder to afford these challenges. Brave Search API gives you access to its novel web-scale data with competitive features, intuitive structuring, and affordable costs. AI devs will particularly benefit from data containing thorough coverage of recent events. Lenny's podcast listeners can get started testing the API for free at brave.com/lenny. That's brave.com/lenny.

• 5:04Lenny Rachitsky?

  Hari, welcome to the podcast.

• 5:06Speaker 00

  Thanks for having me. Been a big fan for a long time.

• 5:09Lenny Rachitsky?

  I really appreciate that. What a fun story behind this conversation. Let me just ask you, how did you feel when I cold-dm'd you on LinkedIn, asking you to be on this podcast because of a random tweet?

• 5:20Speaker 00

  I felt, I felt very honored. I, again, I really have followed your work for a while. It's been really amazing to see what you've built, and I'm a huge fan of different builders. And also, it was a little bit of an honor that someone, I know we're going to get into the story in a little bit, but that's, you know, when you work on something, oftentimes, like jobs and learning, it's, it's rare, I think, that it's in the influencer conversation, right? It's not necessarily something you or other people are probably experiencing on day-to-day. So sometimes I don't know if we get to tell some of these stories, and I really appreciate you reaching out for that.

• 5:50Lenny Rachitsky?

  Yeah, absolutely. So I guess let me just give a big thank you to Jyotin Rajvanshi, also known as The Curious PM, who tweeted about this concept and then is like, hey, talk to Hari about LinkedIn. So thank you, Jyotin, for making this happen. It was all thanks to you. And usually when this happens, someone tweets a recommendation of someone they know each other, and I'm like, I don't know, this is kind of some promotion of some other person, but you guys don't know each other, right?

• 6:16Speaker 00

  We don't, no. But I'm looking forward to meeting you, and thank you again for putting in the word.

• 6:20Lenny Rachitsky?

  Absolutely. And also, thank you to Jyotin for recommending a bunch of questions that I'm going to ask you.

• 6:26Speaker 00

  That I didn't know. So maybe I shouldn't. That I didn't know. But thanks again, Jyotin. It's very kind of you.

• 6:32Lenny Rachitsky?

  Yeah, okay. So let's roll into some stuff. So I actually want to start with LinkedIn as a platform broadly. I know you don't work on like all parts of LinkedIn and don't necessarily know everything that's going on there, but something I've noticed that's pretty major is it feels like LinkedIn's really made this move from being like a very cringey place to post and spend time to like, it's actually now interesting. And the feed that I see on LinkedIn is interesting, oftentimes even more interesting than Twitter, which is crazy to say. Also, it's become the biggest source of traffic for my newsletter, more so than Twitter, which I never expected. So my question is, as far as you know, what is it that y'all did right in the past couple

• 7:14Lenny Rachitsky?

  of years that has allowed for this shift to happen? Because this is very rare.

• 7:18Speaker 00

  Well, first, I'm glad you're having a good experience with it, and that's really, really kind of here. So first of all, it's very interesting. You kind of hit on it. Everything at LinkedIn is a very connected ecosystem. And so one of the things that we always think about is how the whole system fits together. And I'm sure we'll get into it more and more about how we build at LinkedIn. But how you make decisions based on that very complicated ecosystem is actually not very difficult, because we're all here to help people connect to economic opportunity. Like, every time there's a discussion, something I'm really, really proud about working here is everyone knows how that decision is going to be made. And it's all about how we're connecting people to economic opportunity. Now, now, it's funny, just the other day, I was driving, I was in an Uber with the person who runs a feed,

• 8:00Speaker 00

  who's this guy, Kumrush, who's just phenomenal. And we were just talking about this. And one of the things he mentioned to me was, if you think about what a feed is, when it connects someone to opportunity, it's got to do a couple of things really, really well. And we've done a ton of member surveys on this, a ton of thought behind it. The first is, as you make relationship connections across the way, that is a real way by which people get opportunity. They keep in touch with those people, they learn, they might follow someone in hopes of getting known, done, and getting that knowledge. And we've got to make sure that that content is getting to them. Then, when you think outside the network, we have to make sure that the things that people really want, which they keep saying are knowledge and advice and the ability to get the real perspectives they need to get there, those are the things out of network they want. And we've really, really been

• 8:45Speaker 00

  focused on driving those two systems, right? How does someone connect to opportunity, both through the people and through the content that they actually want? And as you know, when you do a feed, there's so many decisions to go into that complex system, so many decisions. But we've been really, really trying to make sure that we don't lose sight of that and start tuning all those knobs into that direction.

• 9:03Lenny Rachitsky?

  So if we're trying to get even more specific with what has changed, clearly, there's been like a focus internally. Is that true? There's just like, hey, let's make this feed a lot more interesting. Or is this just like a never ending? And then it's actually started to work kind of investment as far as you know.

• 9:18Speaker 00

  Well, there's always been a focus on connecting people opportunity. Right. There's always been a focus on that. And I think what's happened over time is we've gotten more and more clear with what our members really want, which is this ability to feel close to those relationships and the ability to really get that knowledge that they need. And as we've gotten better and kind of clearer in that understanding and we've been able to dial the knobs in the right way, I hope it's landing in the right place. I'm always kind of, I don't think it's any place near declaring victory in any of our, any part of this product. Or I think one of the beauty of working with that vision of connecting people opportunity, there is always some piece of friction. There is always something we could be doing better. And so I'm always hesitant to say, you know, we've ever hit that far. And I know there's probably people who listen to you who probably maybe not have not had that experience. And I always encourage you to kind of reach out and let us know ways we can do better.

• 10:03Speaker 00

  But I'm glad you're having experience with it. And then to your point, I always feel that like, as long as we stay focused on that and each of our decisions start moving in that direction, hopefully the product will continue to deliver.

• 10:14Lenny Rachitsky?

  Do you know if there's any product changes that have most contributed to that feed becoming much more interesting?

• 10:21Speaker 00

  Well, there's a couple of things that I think are are very special that we're working on. And it's hard to say which is most because a lot of these things obviously accumulate and compound over time. But certainly there's a lot of machine learning and algorithms that go behind these systems. And many of them, as we've started understanding, these are things that people get value by. It's about how do we make sure that we're giving people that interesting knowledge? And as we've gotten crisper on what that means, I think we've been better, better able to build towards it. The other one, which is new, but I'm just particularly excited about, we're starting to do a lot of things which are gen AI assisted. Right. So you basically can come in and get some prompts and people can bribe their perspective on that. And I think that combination, it's very early, but it's very exciting on how we might be able to help people unlock knowledge.

• 11:06Speaker 00

  We're almost a billion people now on the platform, knowledge of this billion people in a way that people can find and see.

• 11:12Lenny Rachitsky?

  Awesome. Again, I know this isn't like the area you spend all your time on, but maybe one more question along these lines. Do you have any sense of the kind of content that works best on LinkedIn in terms of the algorithm? You talk about like the algorithm is probably one of the bigger impact things that have changed.

• 11:29Speaker 00

  If there's anything with knowledge or advice, I think that's what a lot of people are looking for. Every time we run these surveys, every time we talk to people on what they want, those are the things that really, when you connect opportunity, that people kind of seek after in our system. And, and you're a great example of that, right? You're able to give knowledge and advice in an area with, with a lot of depth. And I think that maybe that's why you're having some of the success you're seeing on the platform, which is wonderful to see.

• 11:53Lenny Rachitsky?

  I think I'm actually not getting as much success as I could because I don't put in the time. I usually just kind of post a simple thing with a link. And I think I could be, if I really, like, I just don't have time to do this. I've just like post a lot more stuff within actual post. I think that would do better.

• 12:09Speaker 00

  That, that actually makes me happy. I mean, my guess is what you want to be doing is learning and creating and not spending a lot of time kind of managing the, and so maybe, maybe that's actually a good thing. And I'm, it's actually another wonderful thing to hear.

• 12:20Lenny Rachitsky?

  Yeah, absolutely. Okay. So let's, let's move to your sweet spot, which is the talent solution product. Is that, is that what it's called?

• 12:29Speaker 00

  Yeah. So it's basically any product on LinkedIn that helps you get a job or learn a skill. And we have products for recruiters and hires, jobs. We have products for job seekers, products for, we have LinkedIn learning. And then certainly we run a pretty large creator ecosystem for instructors who post content into LinkedIn.

• 12:47Lenny Rachitsky?

  And is it true that this is the biggest business within LinkedIn?

• 12:50Speaker 00

  It is, uh, it is a very big business between LinkedIn and it's certainly, uh, hopefully something that again, if you go back to that vision of connecting people opportunity, it's certainly something that's, I like to think is at very, very core of that, how people get jobs and learn skills.

• 13:03Lenny Rachitsky?

  So the feed gets all the glory and you, you guys are making all the money.

• 13:07Speaker 00

  I would not say that. But again, you know, we joke about those things and I. It's so hard at LinkedIn to separate one product from the other. It's really kind of the way we we run, it's the way we think about the product, it's really the way we build. Let me just give you like a super concrete example of that. Certainly, if you have someone coming in and and looking at the feed, one thing we might do is suggest a job recommendation based on what they're looking for in that feed. And so part of what we have to do is think about how someone who's looking at something in their interest might be driving their job seeking experience as well. And then when they're looking for a job, it's very important that they know how they can actually get connected in that job. So the relationships of the network you build are very much part of that flywheel that go into it.

• 13:48Speaker 00

  And then, you know, even as we start looking at this, you might be looking at a subject and then you want to go deeper on it. And there's a course that comes into it as well, right? And so all of this, to me, is a very, very connected ecosystem on how those items work together in order to give people opportunity. And so we we sometimes, we we certainly have, you know, we might think of it from the outset as very different things, but inside, even the way we operate and the way we think about it, it's a very, very connected ecosystem.

• 14:14Lenny Rachitsky?

  What are the components, again, of this part of the org?

• 14:18Speaker 00

  We think about as two different marketplaces. There's a hiring marketplace, which is how do we connect job seekers and recruiters and hiring managers? And then there's a learning marketplace, which is how do you connect learners to instructors?

• 14:29Lenny Rachitsky?

  Got it. And then within hiring, are there subcomponents?

• 14:33Speaker 00

  Yeah. So again, we we really think about it as a marketplace where generally organized around seekers and hires. And so there's a team that's kind of working on recruiter, which is probably one of the more flagship products that LinkedIn has always been around. A team working on jobs, which is if you ever post a job on LinkedIn. And then a team working to always help job seekers make sure they connect. And then on the other side, for learners instructors, a team working on LinkedIn learning, which is one of the bigger enterprise learning products in the world. And then a team working to help instructors. And many people don't know this, we actually have two large film studios. So we we bring in instructors, we film a lot of content, we it's in, we have ones in Europe and and ones in Santa Barbara. It was all through, started with the Linda acquisition.

• 15:14Speaker 00

  And so we have a big, large team of content creators and and teams that everyone from, you know, makeup artists to script writers that we get to use over there.

• 15:22Lenny Rachitsky?

  Wow, it's just marketplaces all the way down as you talk about this hiring marketplace, learning marketplace, the feed itself, probably more I'm not thinking about.

• 15:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's very much, I mean, one model that we sometimes use internally as well is how do we, we operate as marketplaces inside an ecosystem. And I think it's a, it kind of speaks to the complexity again of the product and hopefully somehow of how we might operate it.

• 15:46Lenny Rachitsky?

  So I think with your vantage point at being at the center of hiring, a lot is changing within the hiring marketplace in the past, I don't know, year at this point, where it used to be very candidate oriented, where they had all the power and the salaries were crazy, everyone's bidding and trying to get people to join their company. And now it's completely opposite. So many people looking, companies have all the power. I'm curious what you've seen, if that's roughly it, or what you're seeing basically in the hiring market these days?

• 16:15Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, well, first of all, the balance that you're talking about, it is shifting in the sense that there are more seekers in the marketplace now, and there are fewer open jobs in the marketplace. And then, of course, that changes how many applications you get for the job and how you have to look through. I think there's a model where people think it's drifting dramatically to exactly the way it was. And I actually think some of the changes that occurred during the last couple of years are actually sticking around. And so let me give you a couple of examples of where things I think are really changing. So the first thing that happened was, and maybe in my opinion, one of the big changes to the world that no one's really kind of talking about it, to my degree is the impact of it, but there's been a real move to skills-based hiring. So for the longest time, and I'll, I'll give you actually

• 16:57Speaker 00

  a really concrete example. It was like March 2020 and we were just watching COVID hit and it was just this heartbreaking kind of moment where in the feed, you were seeing all these people by no fault of their own, starting to post that they've lost their job. And we started seeing in our data is you had some areas like maybe hospitality was really getting hit, but some areas like customer service that just couldn't hire enough. And, and you'd think the marketplace would balance pretty quickly. You think, okay, like, you know, maybe these people will start moving to other jobs, but it wasn't happening. And a large reason behind is people are used to looking for certain particular titles. And they didn't start realizing other people could do this job. So we made a pretty big push in something we call skills first hiring. This was the idea that we could translate people's experiences into a set of skills.

• 17:39Speaker 00

  And by that, we could help them really start balancing the marketplace with a much different system. Right. But instead of saying, I need to have this talent, you could say, I need someone who can do negotiation. And I need someone who can really help me kind of understand how to deescalate a customer situation. And you find a lot of people in hospitality have about 70% of the skills and need for customer service. And of course, you could train up the rest. And so we started seeing the skills first hiring really start taking off. And at this point, roughly 47% of recruiters will come in explicitly use skills when they start looking for candidates. And that's a pretty big change that we're actually seeing hold. So it's not like people are starting to, you know, I know it's early in some of these changes, but it's a change where I think people are still continuing to start looking at skills.

• 18:20Speaker 00

  Another one was this concept of there's a lot more people who were starting to look for jobs by values. They were saying, look, I mean, most job sites work by, you know, you come in and you look for a job and a title. And that's kind of how you navigate the world. And we started realizing a lot of people wanted to come in and instead of look at it like that, they may say, this is, look, I really want a job that's aligned to my purpose. Or even by an interest, I may want something in AI. And we started launching collections and the way to filter in these things. We're still seeing some of that usage stake. And so I think that the job market is rebalancing, but it's being done. The pathways are being done in a very different way. That seems to be something that, you know, maybe a change that holds through these ups and downs. And that'll be very interesting to see.

• 18:58Lenny Rachitsky?

  What's interesting is it's not like this would change on its own. This is as you're, the biggest job is marketplace in the world, right?

• 19:07Speaker 00

  We have, we have a lot of professional jobs in our platform and a lot of professional seekers.

• 19:11Lenny Rachitsky?

  Mysterious, I imagine it is, I don't know. I guess indeed might be a competitor, but okay, let's say it's one of the bigger job markets. Uh, like you influence the way jobs are sought and posted, right? And how people find jobs. So in a sense. Designing, it sounds like basically there was an internal decision, let's focus on a skills approach. And what's cool about that is that changes the way hiring happens in the world.

• 19:33Speaker 00

  You know, it's one of the things that I think is so interesting about billing products today is, you know, it has to clearly be something people want. Like if we had just said, we're going to go like this, and every hire was like, I don't want to do this, or every job seeker said, this is not care about, I don't think anything would click. But you also have to be receptive enough to kind of amplify that signal and allow it to work through a system so that it could actually be easy to use. And so I don't know if it was, I don't, I don't think we said that, you know, or, you know, hey, there was some, hey, we gotta go and do this value this thing. I think we started feeling it and hearing it from members. And then as we adapted, these things start amplifying as they come through. I do think that's hopefully something that, you know, I, I think about a lot is, you know, let's just make sure that we, we keep a pulse on what people want, and we make sure that we can kind of get

• 20:18Speaker 00

  that through a system at a pretty fast pace, because then we will hopefully continue to be a place where people want to go look for jobs and make hires.

• 20:24Lenny Rachitsky?

  What I was thinking about as you were just chatting is this open to work feature that LinkedIn has, and how, I remember days before that existed, and there's people used to just like, Jerry rig, hey, I'm hiring, or I'm looking for a job. And there's always the sense that if you're open to work, you're not as good, because why would you be amazing and open to work and not hired? And I'm curious if you were even part of this experience, just like, what was it like to come up with that approach to how to communicate that you're open to work?

• 20:51Speaker 00

  It's been through phases. And I think those phases really reflect on kind of perception of how it's changed. I mean, in the beginning, it was, you could say you're open to work, but it was a secret signal to recruiters, if you will. That certainly still exists, but now we said you could more publicly say it, and maybe it would be a feedback. And then we kind of started launching, it was around COVID, when a lot of the stigmas of unemployment changed dramatically, because everyone started understanding you're in this different situation. And we started putting the frame. And, and that's kind of the more iconic way I think people are associated with now. It's funny, just this week, we tried something new, and I feel like it's almost the same journey. There are many customers, as you imagine, have LinkedIn Learning and LinkedIn Learning is typically an enterprise product. It works across your employee base. So we're trying

• 21:35Speaker 00

  to do open to internal work where you can say, I'm actually at the point where I may want a next play internally in my role and an internal recruiter can see you. And as you can imagine, I would actually even maybe argue more stigma about being concerned about setting your manager. And certainly, there's, there's different cultures and companies about this. And I, I have a feeling in, you know, sometimes we like to think five, 10 years out, I think it's going to go on the same journey. I, that's kind of one hunch I have that it'll also be an employment, employment driven kind of way internally for people to find their next play. And it'll be interesting to see how it plays out. But already it's, you can feel a little bit of that tension right when we launched it and kind of know. And I hope I, let's see how this goes.

• 22:13Lenny Rachitsky?

  You're talking about how hiring is changing. I'm curious how PM hiring specifically is changing. A lot of people listening to this podcast are product managers. Is there anything unique you're noticing there?

• 22:22Speaker 00

  Maybe a couple of stats that could be very helpful. If you're having a hard time finding a PM role, let's start with this. You're probably not alone. We publish it. You can go to economic graph data. This is all public. We publish this. But if you look at tech, it's down about 50% year over year. And we look at kind of hires over total population on LinkedIn. You can go to economic graphs and you can see that how it compares across the industry. And, and we don't look at the functional data as much, but as you can, the PM data seems to be trending just slightly even maybe below software engineers and that as well, which is maybe a comp for this. And I know not everything is perfect industry to function kind of cuts. So, so it is a difficult, it is a difficult place. But I'll give you a couple of tips because I imagine that may be helpful for a couple of the listeners. And it's certainly one of the larger inbounds of things I get. The first is in, in those

• 23:07Speaker 00

  kind of markets, you do want to make sure that the more you can do to kind of form relationships and kind of say that this is, you know, we can, which is always helpful. Now, I know that not everyone has relationships, but you can always try to develop those at different places and across LinkedIn as well. But that's one thing I would really, really strive to look for. The second thing I would really do is we have launched the way now to come in and kind of signal, obviously, that you're interested in a role. We have those open to work capabilities. But then each of job has a set of skills that they're looking for under it, like we talked about in Skills First Hiring. And against each skill, you can actually add different kinds of credentials. And I would really encourage people to add work products, if that's something that are actually building. If you add different kinds of recommendations or other things that can associate with that skill.

• 23:49Speaker 00

  And those credentials against it, I think, are becoming much more interesting for people to say, oh, this is someone I'm actually looking for. And then the third thing I would really encourage kind of PMs to start looking through is, I think in every, this is probably more personal than anything in kind of data.

• 24:05Speaker 00

  But every PM job is different. And if you have experience in that industry and you're able to kind of show that you have experience in industry or some kind of understanding of it, I think that's a way to separate. And so I'd really start zoning in on roles where you might see that kind of the, if you don't have the functional experience, kind of the industry experience. And I think that that would kind of go a long way is how to help you differentiate from, yes, what's probably more candidates or more applications going in each role.

• 24:29Lenny Rachitsky?

  And when you say industry experience, what's an example of that?

• 24:32Speaker 00

  Imagine that you are applying for a PM role, but that particular software is in, I don't know, automotive tech. If you happen to have worked in automotive before, have a knowledge about cars, it's a very helpful way to get in. And I think if you're able to show that, you can show an industry knowledge and an understanding of it. I think it's a real nice way to think about how to position yourself against some of the other candidates.

• 24:55Lenny Rachitsky?

  What else can that person looking for a job do to improve their chances of a recruiter basically finding them? I feel like that's probably the best tactical thing they can do because a lot of LinkedIn recruiters reach in on finding you.

• 25:08Speaker 00

  There's two things that anyone who's hiring is always going to look for. They're going to look for your skills and capabilities, and they're going to look for your intent and interest in the role. And a lot of our products and the pathways we try to do are making those things simpler. So maybe we'll just start with interest and interest and when we're back skills in a minute. A couple of things we've launched recently, and I think they're symbolic of other ways you can connect. If you go to a company page and you looking at the company and they've, I think they have to opt into this in some degree. And you say, look, you can say you're interested in that company, even though they don't have roles. And when the next role comes up, they'll have a signal that this person is actually very interested in this role. And that's an easy way to kind of signify from the early stage, you're, you know, that you have interest in them. And that way, when they open up a role, as you can imagine, they start looking through, they'll have a spotlight in recruiter and they can click on it and come through.

• 25:52Speaker 00

  Certainly you can go into open to work and say that this is something, you know, that I'm open to work right now. And you can signify to the whole population that, you know, this is an area that you want to go for as well. And I would encourage both of those in some ways. If you're looking for a role, be open about it and tell the companies that you're looking for there. Those are really high signals of intent. The other thing you can do on LinkedIn is you can actually go through when you say open to work and you can specify like particular kinds of jobs and things you're looking for. And I think that more detailed intent helps make sure you're showing it to the right place.

• 26:21Speaker 00

  On the skill side, we kind of talked about a little bit, but I do think there's a big change. When you were just looking at title, I think you only had one way to really prove that you had the skills. You had to have that title, which is very hard to break in. In a world where you're looking at skills, you can go through and say, look, I can do these things and you could put evidence behind it. And I'd really encourage people to do that. If you just go to a kind of any job post, you can see the skills, you can say add, and you can see all the evidence and how you can add it. And I would really encourage people to do that because when people are in recruiter and they're looking for skills, profiles pop up and you can scroll over a skill and you can actually see all those evidence. And you can basically a recruiter could say, oh, this is why I'd recommend you to this hiring manager. And, and I think you will find that that's a, hopefully a very useful way of doing it.

• 27:05Lenny Rachitsky?

  I'm going to lob this question like a, like a fishing line to see if there's catches anything and if not, we'll move on. Are there any stats that you've seen of just like if you do XYZ, your chances of getting hired or getting people reaching out or just go significantly higher?

• 27:20Speaker 00

  Uh, open to work certainly has a high signal to noise and it's, uh, as you can imagine, when someone's looking to fill a role, that's one they want. Uh, we are early in company commitments, but we are seeing some signal there that we gotta move through. Skills has a pretty high signal as well. Uh, when you're able to come through and, and, and show and demonstrate your skills, we're seeing, uh, some, some correlation to basically people getting a role. And then the final one that is harder for us to look through, but it's certainly important. I do think we, we show the hiring manager on a lot of the roles we show these people through, and it's harder for us to kind of trace that because of the, the way the outcomes kind of work. But I would really encourage people to, to look through that and see if you can get in front of those people.

• 27:58Lenny Rachitsky?

  Is there a max seniority that you find works effectively on LinkedIn to find a job? Like I imagine like CPOs aren't finding jobs on LinkedIn. Is there just like, if I'm looking for a job, is, do you have like a rule of thumb of like, if you're at this level, maybe you're not gonna have a lot of luck if you're below this level?

• 28:15Speaker 00

  We certainly have CPO jobs that are posted, but the difference often is job post versus recruiting. And more and more senior roles are often recruited. And so we find that people will use LinkedIn in order to connect to a CPO. And many people who are senior will say, oh, I got a message on LinkedIn and that led to this, or they made a long-term recruiting contact. Uh, but it may not happen through you finding a job and hitting the application button.

• 28:38Lenny Rachitsky?

  Let's talk about LinkedIn as a company to work in, culture maybe for a bit. You told me that you have a story about your first product review when you joined LinkedIn and how that was, uh, wild. Can you just tell that story? I haven't heard this yet.

• 28:51Speaker 00

  Yeah. So I, I came through a, a, a small acquisition that they made of our company, and I thought it was such a telling moment in this, uh, first product review. I, I went in and as you can imagine, when you join a company, there's a lot of advice on, um, Kind of how you should make that product work. And I didn't know anything. I've never been a PM. And I remember kind of taking a lot of that advice and putting together a presentation and just getting destroyed during that review. I think Jeff was the head of product and CEO at that point. And in a very kind way, it was basically like, this doesn't make any sense. And I just remember driving home and kind of calling my wife and like, I think I might be fired. I'm not sure if I was fired, but he was very kind about it. He's like, just come back in the next, I think, like five, four weeks.

• 29:31Speaker 00

  And I remember at that point, I was like, if you're gonna go in and, you know, you only have one more shot, just do something you believe in, right? And kind of make sure it kind of works. And we started from that point and we worked backwards from there and this concept of, hey, I do believe that the most important thing is connecting opportunity and we should really understand how to do that. And let's just start from there. And it went very well. And to me, it was another way of you, you're in these large systems, you're in these large companies, you're in these like, I think LinkedIn is very special because no matter what it is, it's got a very good North Star. And it was a moment for me to kind of really hammer that home that like, as long as you get that North Star in, you know, ahead of you, you're going to be just fine. And I think it's a, you know,

• 30:12Speaker 00

  I never worked at a place like that before. And I think a lot of times people wonder, we have, you can imagine, we have, the way we're talking about, we certainly have an engagement ecosystem. We have the hiring business and we have a marketing solutions business. We have a big premium business. You can imagine when you're trying to make decisions across that, it could get very, very complicated. And I think when people ask me to describe LinkedIn, I often start with that story because I feel like, you know, it helps cut through how decisions are made and kind of what it's seen as success.

• 30:38Lenny Rachitsky?

  And just to clarify, so that North Star is that phrase that you used of just connecting people to economic opportunity, right?

• 30:44Speaker 00

  That's it. That's it. And it sounds, I know it sounds bigger than it seems, but I can probably, you know, time example again, you can understand when someone's driving and I haven't been here for a little bit now. You can understand when someone knows that, when someone doesn't. It's a, it's a hard thing to lose track of.

• 31:00Lenny Rachitsky?

  Yeah, it does sound vague and like a nice fuzzy warm thing that people, people can say. What you're saying is it, it's actually like, it's brought up in meetings constantly in product reviews. Like you're saying in this product review, everything changed when you came at it from that one perspective.

• 31:16Speaker 00

  Yeah. I mean, this was my first product here was the profile. You can make a profile that does a lot of different things, as you can imagine. You could, you know, you could think about how identity could be used in many different phases and what you should prioritize or not. But if you can explain why this is the thing that you should do that would help someone, you know, really do what they want to do, maybe it's, you know, have an incredible podcast and send that out there. Maybe it's helping them connect to a job, but if you can understand intent and how this unblocked and why you want to prioritize that item, all of a sudden, the world gets a lot simpler.

• 31:51Lenny Rachitsky?

  How does that actually get operationalized at a company? Is it just the leaders remind people of that? It's like painted on the walls. How is that a thing that people come back to over and over?

• 32:01Speaker 00

  I do think it's a lot of repeat, repeat, repeat. I do think that's it. I do think the culture has a pretty high immune system now in the sense that when you aren't operating by that, people can see it and they operate against it. But I often, I also think it's probably the, I think when, you know, Jeffery and Ryan, and they are just exceptional at continuously repeating that. And it's been so consistent for so long that I think it's just kind of the DNA now. And I do think it's exceptional. I think it's exceptional leadership and I've learned so much from kind of watching it and how it's how it gets operated.

• 32:34Lenny Rachitsky?

  Is there a metric associated with that when people use it in a way of like, no, that's not actually what we mean? Is there some way of making it even more concrete in goals, metrics, ways to understand if people are actually achieving that?

• 32:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, totally. So, so I think at the next level of operation, what we think about is, you know, when we run these marketplaces throughout this ecosystem to connect people, what are the outputs that they matter? So, so I'll just give you mine, for example. We think a lot about number of hires, converting hires, how many people did we match, which is a real tangible way of looking at opportunity. And then number of people who learned a skill, which is usually in this world measured more by time than anything. If you learn, spend time for X amount of minutes, we kind of do that skill because oftentimes skills don't have a direct outcome as you can measure it. And so we, we basically look at those things more than any other to say, how successful that we are operating that marketplace.

• 33:22Lenny Rachitsky?

  Got it. Those make total sense to me.

• 33:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:24Lenny Rachitsky?

  Are there other core values of LinkedIn that are public that you can share?

• 33:28Speaker 00

  I mean, you can Google them too. And so they're very, very public. But probably the one that I think is most important to talk about is in this, in this world is there's this concept of members first. And I think anytime you run an ecosystem as complex as we do, and you think about even if you're trying to connect people, opportunity, there's two people, how are you going to decide right now who needs it? I think having clarity on which piece of the ecosystem is, is, you know, going to be where the focus is, it helps us make sure we establish a relationship of trust first, make sure to understand who's getting, you know, access to data, make sure we understand our decisions are being made. And I always love that as a principle that we stuck by.

• 34:05Lenny Rachitsky?

  Yeah, I see it on the page here. We put members first.

• 34:09Lenny Rachitsky?

  So

• 34:09Speaker 00

  Great checks out is what you're telling me.

• 34:11Lenny Rachitsky?

  Checks out, checks out.

• 34:13Lenny Rachitsky?

  What's interesting is the connecting people to opportunity, economic opportunity is not one of these values. It seems like it's even broader. They should have the company, basically. Got it. Okay. I love that. This episode is brought to you by EPO. EPO is a next generation A B testing platform built by Airbnb alums for modern growth teams. Companies like DraftKings, Zapier, ClickUp, Twitch, and Cameo rely on EPO to power their experiments. Wherever you work, running experiments is increasingly essential. But there are no commercial tools that integrate with a modern growth team stack. This leads to waste of time building internal tools or trying to run your own experiments through a clunky marketing tool. When I was at Airbnb, one of the things that I loved most about working there was our experimentation platform,

• 34:57Lenny Rachitsky?

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• 35:32Lenny Rachitsky?

  You've kind of touched on this idea of a complex system and I want to spend a little bit more time there. So LinkedIn is, as you said, very, very complicated. There's all these marketplaces within marketplaces. There's so many customers you gotta make happy. They all have to work together. I'm just curious what you've learned about building and maintaining a complex ecosystem like that.

• 35:55Speaker 00

  It's a fantastic question and it's, you know, first I just openly think I, first of all, just career wise, always been drawn to that. I think, you know, as many, we talk about product as a whole, right? We always talk about as a whole, but there's many different things you can build, many different types of things. And then we kind of go, maybe there's hardware and software, consumer goods. I actually try to kind of think about products by their complexity curve a lot. I think that the skills you need to manage a complicated kind of ecosystem versus maybe the skills you need to design something that's less interconnected or quite different. And I can, I will get to the details, maybe what I mean in a minute. But I do think LinkedIn is a particularly complicated place and I do think that the skillsets that you think through and you try to manage are in a complicated ecosystem are quite different. So, so maybe some tactics that can help if it's something.

• 36:40Lenny Rachitsky?

  Yeah, let's do it.

• 36:42Speaker 00

  You know, one of the things that I often think about is this concept of cause and effect, right? Like if you have non interconnected, so if you have non interconnected things, it's actually quite easy not to have to think about that. You made something people love and you know, I wrote a, I wrote a children's book not too long ago and it was fun. It was awesome to write. Once it was done, it was kind of done and it was out there and it was able to go. And that's a little bit different than here, right? If you kind of make a change, like open to work, all of a sudden you're thinking through the perception of someone on the other side, what is that going to do? Are they going to use the platform less or more? You're thinking about customers. What are they going to do with that data? Are they going to, to your point, perceive someone in a different way or not? You have to think through third and second and third and maybe even fourth order effects and kind of manage that as you go through.

• 37:27Speaker 00

  And I think that is something we really pride ourselves on is how do we start thinking through these different things? And how do we start measuring them as we go? And that is one. The second thing I actually think is that it does lead to your point a lot. You need a different kind of decision-making mechanism because there's a lot more ties in the ecosystem and a lot of people who just need a way to break it. And we've kind of put in things like we have something called Rapid, which is a really easy way to know who the decision maker is. Just, you know, you line up who's a recommender, who has to agree, who's a decision maker. We have something called a five-day escalation rule, which makes sure that those items are in. And I think you lead a lot more of those fuse, you know, I don't know what they're called, fuse limits or just systems in place in order to manage that complexity so that things get done. And, and I think that those processes are actually really, really important to make sure that the ecosystem can run.

• 38:10Lenny Rachitsky?

  Let's talk about these two processes, Rapid and what was the other one? Five-day?

• 38:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, five-day alignment and they've both been around LinkedIn for a little bit, but they're great. The Rapid is just a question of, you know, oftentimes to your point, if you're running two, three marketplaces, several different business model here, there's a question of who has the decision, right? Who can make the decision in this situation? And so making sure that you have a single person's name with a decision and that person is, you know, you know, that is really, really important because it gets clarity real fast. I mean, it's more of a personal rule, but kind of one thing I love to say is, you know, if you had three back and forth in an email, you got to pick up the phone and if you've been on the phone for 20 minutes, it's time to just write the, write that decision maker and go. And that way you can make sure the concept of an hour, you should be able to get a decision. It doesn't always operate like that. I'm sure there's many PMs on LinkedIn who are operating who maybe, who may have some feedback from me on that, but that's kind of the intent behind it.

• 38:58Speaker 00

  And then a five-day alignment is, you know, you should hold your managers accountable that in five days, if someone has something that they haven't been able to escalate and solve, that's probably then on the next level of person. But as you run that ecosystem and there's so much complexity around it, I think you need some of those processes in place in order to start answering some of those tiebreakers, if you will.

• 39:17Lenny Rachitsky?

  Oh, I like that five-day rule. Basically puts the clock on a manager to get, to unblock, basically.

• 39:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 39:25Lenny Rachitsky?

  And with rapid, I don't know if I totally understand, is that an acronym for something? Or is it just?

• 39:29Speaker 00

  It is.

• 39:29Lenny Rachitsky?

  Make decisions rapidly?

• 39:30Speaker 00

  No, it's a great question. The D stands for decisions, but the R is for who's recommending it. The A is permanent has to agree. The I is for other people who may be able to be putting in an input. And so it's basically a list of people who need to be in the decision chain.

• 39:44Lenny Rachitsky?

  Got it.

• 39:45Speaker 00

  I would argue the most important things have a single name on that decision line, because that usually makes sure that you can get a decision very quickly.

• 39:51Lenny Rachitsky?

  Are there any other really common frameworks or processes along these lines at LinkedIn that you find really helpful?

• 39:56Speaker 00

  The third thing is just in how we think about talent, especially in the product organization. And I often really do try to suss out during interviews or how we promote people, just their ability to see systems. Because I do think it's, again, I do think it's a different skill set and a different capability of how we kind of map those things out on a complexity curve. And so oftentimes, I think those talent systems will, those who are able to see the whole, make decisions about the whole, that's kind of rare, actually. I think most talent systems are, hey, how did your division grow or your product grow? Your era grow? And we've tried our best to understand. It's not just about that. I mean, you want accountability in the ecosystem, of course, but how well does this person work across?

• 40:38Speaker 00

  And I think it's how we've created telemetry around that or organizational understanding of that, how we've understood ourselves, kind of just, hey, this is the skill set that's really important here. I think that's quite rare in driving that kind of complex system as well.

• 40:52Lenny Rachitsky?

  One more question along these lines.

• 40:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 40:54Lenny Rachitsky?

  You've been at LinkedIn for a long time. It feels like historically LinkedIn, like as a product team, the external impression was it's very optimizy oriented and everyone there is just micro optimizing all the little features of LinkedIn. Like everyone I've worked with from LinkedIn, they're just really good at just optimizing things. And it feels like a lot of new stuff is happening with LinkedIn these days. And I'm curious if that's been like a real intentional shift of like, let's not focus so much on making emails work better and like all the click through rates of everything and more, just let's innovate more, let's do some bigger bets.

• 41:33Speaker 00

  I do think there's two things that to kind of acknowledge. First, it's an incredible growth team. And I think a lot of people that go on from LinkedIn in incredible roles are growth. So I think there's an influence or change that a lot of people you meet might be growth oriented. The second thing is, especially when LinkedIn started, I, and I'm, like you said, I've been here a little bit of time. But growing the network is probably a very, very important thing to get the scale out. So I think a lot of things people interacted with at first were maybe more growth mechanisms than than other systems. I do think there's always been, at least for the last, you know, several years, an underlying line that values what's going to carry this ecosystem and values ultimately what makes the day. And to your point, I like to think that, you know, they may not be the most, I don't

• 42:17Speaker 00

  know, the glittery items, right? But I'm really proud of what we've done with skills. I think that's like one of those invisible systems that no one really knows, like, oh my gosh, that's a huge disruption if people can now get, that's a huge language that people have created, that's a huge way that people have changed. Really proud of what we've done with kind of values, even open to work and commitments. These are major social systems that we've kind of wired through. I'm really proud of what we've done with LinkedIn Learning. I would argue it's one of the bigger creator systems in the world. It's these incredible instructors and the ability to take someone who teaches, maybe is not great, kind of on camera and move them to studio and give them that capability and take their voice out there. And I think there's a lot of different things we've done that maybe because they're more

• 42:59Speaker 00

  invisible, if you will, or they're hidden in a marketplace that necessarily, you know, maybe that a lot of the influencer voices may not actually need an access every day. I don't know if they get as much visibility, but I like to think that's been part of the DNA for a while and we've been really thinking through it.

• 43:17Lenny Rachitsky?

  Let's actually talk about LinkedIn Learning. So I know this is a big passion of yours. You have your own course within this that I want to talk about, but broadly, just what is LinkedIn Learning, just so people understand, because I don't know if a lot of people know this exists within LinkedIn.

• 43:29Speaker 00

  Great question. LinkedIn Learning is basically a way to learn professional skills. And so we entered the business in 2015 and the thesis was it's kind of, we think about as a marketplace, again, you have seekers and job and oftentimes. Seekers may not have all the skills in order to get the job. You had this long kind of, we're moving now towards the skills model, but without question, you know, this Irish second order impact, I don't think any of us wanted to kind of, if you will, like Uberize the world. Like, I don't think any of us wanted to make it, or there, we wanted to make sure everyone had the skills in order to learn the skills in order to get there. And so getting the learning business is really, really important for the vision and the mission. And basically, the idea was that we'd have ways to teach people skills that was very much tailored to professionals. Now, that was kind of the vision.

• 44:13Speaker 00

  The way the mechanism works is we go and get the best instructors in the world. We will bring them into a film studio and we'll do it at home or in a way that makes the content extremely, we help write the scripts, we obviously have incredible graphics. I just, in a way that makes a teacher and someone who's an expert who may not always have the capability in the sense of the time to go and make their own online course and get them in the studio and go from there. And then the vast majority of people will probably have access through their company. The vast majority of the usage and kind of the business runs through enterprise and is a large enterprise learning product.

• 44:47Lenny Rachitsky?

  Awesome. Like, just as a quarter, I don't know, armchair quarterback strategy person, I could see where this came from of, we're trying to help people connect to economic opportunity, find jobs. How do we help them? Oh, they don't have the skill. Let's help them build the skills. Makes a lot of sense. Okay. And so, within this, you have your own course on product management.

• 45:05Speaker 00

  Well, it's funny. So, I mean, open, I'd been thinking about a course for a while, but largely it was, you know, it was this concept of, I wanted to make sure I tried our own product and I understood the instructor pain point. But it's a very scary experience. You know, it's like, first, I don't know if I had anything to teach. I own concerns about that. But about four or five years ago, one of the things we started at PM internally was Product University. We had our own internal university, which was basically, we got some survey, we sent it out. I think everyone told us, well, you know, like, It's like literally like the most negative one was we didn't, people said, I don't have the skills to do my job. And I remember looking around like, oh, it's pretty obvious. We hired a bunch of people. There's no PM degree and we've done nothing. And so what we started doing is internally creating a product university. It was a bootcamp coming in.

• 45:50Speaker 00

  You know, we, we tried to get from different models and one of the things we really learned was you can't teach this just through frameworks, right? You needed to have a series of case studies, need to have a real series of examples. But luckily we had a bunch of things we've done at LinkedIn. So we started putting a curriculum against that. And then just recently, a few of us got together and we filmed the actual course for it. So it's basically taking our product university bootcamp and kind of opening it up to the world.

• 46:14Lenny Rachitsky?

  And you opened up some of your internal use cases as a part of this course?

• 46:17Speaker 00

  We do. Yeah.

• 46:18Lenny Rachitsky?

  That's awesome. I always say that one of the things you don't realize you have as an advantage, working at a bigger company is access to tons of strategy documents and vision documents and like stories of this, because once you're out, no one's going to be able to share those with you because they're so private. Like I don't have access to any of these anymore. So that's a really cool perk of working at a company like LinkedIn.

• 46:40Lenny Rachitsky?

  Question about your course. What are some of your biggest lessons that you teach? Can you just give a preview of some of the tidbits that you might learn in this course of yours?

• 46:48Speaker 00

  Well, again, a lot of it is case studies and use cases and the same way we teach it here. But a couple of things that we do talk through, you know, when we started doing the kind of our own product university, we realized a couple of big pain points that people hit. The first was it's actually really hard to know how to validate and what the bar is for a new idea in any organization. I think it's really hard to kind of say that. So we provide a lot of frameworks, kind of simple things from, hey, you know, you got to prove to, to the world why there's, there's duct tape in here, right? There's someone actually physically going out and trying to do it. How you can prioritize a list of ideas against a pain point, like how to kind of make a simple expression and how to kind of look through, you know, what's an acute pain point and what's a wide range of people use? How we'd expect data in order to be used in order to validate this. So

• 47:32Speaker 00

  kind of tools you could use to kind of say if this is a good idea or a bad idea, more importantly, tools to make sure you've went through the process and how you can mitigate it. So that's kind of one in framework set that we kind of talked through. The other is, you know, a lot about Damian, who leads our growth team, comes in and he starts talking a lot about leading, uh, kind of thinking in loops. And so how do you make sure that when you're building something, it can have the fuel in order to cascade and grow? And I think just the framework of doing that, how you measure that, how you monitor that is also something that, at least when I was starting and doing my startup, it was, it was quite, uh, something I wish I had had access to. And so, uh, those are maybe two good examples of frameworks and tools that we come through. And then of course, trying to overlay that with real cases, not always successful ones, of course, too.

• 48:13Speaker 00

  We talk about a lot of the failures we've had and where we probably went wrong if we had to diagnose them post mortem.

• 48:19Lenny Rachitsky?

  A lot of the people listening to this are people that want to get into product management and are in PMs yet. I imagine you get asked this a lot. How do I get into product management? What is your advice that you often give?

• 48:29Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, let's start with, uh, kind of how we looked at the world, which is, you know, this idea of skills. You know, we had a, kind of, we have a diagram that I think about, which is skills are kind of on a triangle. You might've heard this one before. I don't know if you have. Skills are on a triangle. I think you need three different skills to be a great PM. You need to be kind of a Steven Spielberg type creator. You something around data science and the ability to really look at data and see patterns and kind of see the future. And then, you know, especially getting more senior, I think it's a lot of general management, right? You have to basically be able to understand that in a way across the team, understand how budget, understand how companies work. I've actually never seen a great PM who's in the center of it. I find the great PMs live on the edges. Like there's a, you know, there's always someone who's like this exceptional data science and the ability to maybe be a great GM and lead inspire.

• 49:14Speaker 00

  Or, or maybe someone who's so creative who can, you know, lead a team in a different way. And, and I think that one thing I would really, really encourage people to do is understand where they fit on that graph and gravitate towards those kinds of roles. Because a lot of times I think what people do is they think they have to make up for the other pieces of that graph. And, and it leads them to a path where maybe they're not playing to their strengths. That's one thing I always encourage people. The other thing I would say, and I know it's a little bit of luck in how this works, but I think about my journey, one thing I've really found was really helpful is I was lucky to have, I was on the first team that did a hybrid SUV in the US. At the time, it was a hybrid Escape at Ford, and I came from the Midwest, and it was one of those products

• 49:55Speaker 00

  where people would really drive out for hundreds of miles and see, and really a community gravitate around because it was a very special product. And being able to work on something that people loved, like really loved early on, and see what that felt like and looked like and that success was, it kind of created a bar for what I would hope my products could do, right? And if you're able to get into something that people really love and feel that and experience that and really understand what that looks like and what it takes to get there, I think that's actually been a really valuable lesson throughout my career because you can understand the whole path on the way up. And I look back at that as really something that I would hope other people, if they can do it. I know you're making rule decisions on many different criteria, but try to find something people love and really experience what that feels like.

• 50:40Lenny Rachitsky?

  To kind of build on that, with PMs that work for you and work with you, when they're looking to get better and build their skills, other than, you know, go take some courses on LinkedIn Learning, what do you often recommend they do to help become stronger and better at their job?

• 50:55Speaker 00

  So first, it is that feeling of you've got to own your product and you've got to speak up and say, this is where I want to drive it. Because a lot of times I think people are scared to do that or worried about doing that or don't feel that's their actual role. So one, it's like extreme clarity on, hey, this is your role is to own this and take this to the next level. And, you know, when you start kind of molding the clay, people want to come and help. When you start building something cool, people are like, oh, you did kind of gravitate into it. But until you can start doing that, that's really tough. So one, it's letting people know that's kind of what's expected them. And then, two, I would tell people to just build. As crazy as it sounds, like I spent a lot of my time kind of on the side, just trying to build different things, try, I mean, try different clay, think through different ideas. And I think that is a really important skill to

• 51:39Speaker 00

  have, to just being able to say, okay, I'm going to start with the blank sheet and make some art, or whatever it is you want to do. And I encourage people to do that because it's muscle like anything else, right? You can get an atrophy. And I really do think, no matter what, kind of the heart of PM is that ability to be a builder, and you do have to make sure you can keep doing it.

• 51:57Lenny Rachitsky?

  Yeah, that's actually a great segue to where I was gonna go next, which is you say you build and you like to build stuff, but you're like legitimately building a lot of stuff. So you have the site Mind of Hari.com where you share all these side projects. So can you just talk about what's going on there and some of the stuff that you've built?

• 52:13Speaker 00

  You know, arguably, the only thing I've ever been good at in my life is just building things and creating things. And I get a lot of energy from it. And yeah, I have a site. It's called Mind of Hari because it is really whatever's top of mind. I try to do my best to completely separate it from business. I know there's always a draw as a good PM to kind of say, is there a business here? But I try to keep it as art, just, you know, like it's completely art and it's what I want to build. And I take on new subjects and I have two little kids and, you know, it's, it's fun to kind of, one of them was a book me and my oldest wrote. And it was kind of a set of bedtime stories we did. And then one day I was like, hey, we should just make this a notebook and we did it. I think it's got about half a million readers now. So it's, you know, it's, it's, it's been fun to kind of see it, you know, take some life and go through.

• 52:57Speaker 00

  We made a board game recently that I know Stanford Design School or some professors there have been using. And it was called Parallel Universe and it's how do you kind of, kind of have a card and then be able to see like, you know, maybe the card says there's no windows in this world anymore. And then what would happen in that world? And you got to list 10 different things that would happen. So kind of that, that ability to kind of think ahead and, and, and kind of fun sci fi. I make kind of healthy gummy bears. I just try to take something completely new and have that, I don't know, it's probably one of the more fun moments in this world where you can sit there and just create something and have some new clay. And yeah, it's, that is what that website is about.

• 53:34Lenny Rachitsky?

  Wait, so you made actual gummy bears?

• 53:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, we are doing some with gummy bears. So Lenny, I know you're expecting a new additional bit and congratulations again. But one of the things I found when I had kids is no matter what I was trying to do, there was like candy and sugar everywhere, like any Halloween and birthday party, et cetera. So I wanted to create, you can't get rid of it because like, you know, it was just hard to do. So I, you know, we were like, hey, we're going to sit down and make our own gummy bear. What I found is this is just a fun tidbit for your readers. You open like, A Twizzler or one of those, about 80% of what's in there is sugar because they're optimizing for shelf life, right? They're optimizing what's in the store. And so what we were able to do is basically create a gummy bear about 40% of its sugar. It's just got five ingredients. Honey is the sweetener because I don't want to give my kids some alternative sweeteners. But yeah, we have a small commercial kitchen and we produce some gummy bears. And if you

• 54:19Speaker 00

  ever want to try them, to any of my, to any of your followers, I'm happy to send some gummy bears and hopefully you can, you can check them out.

• 54:26Lenny Rachitsky?

  Wait, how do people, is there a way to buy them somewhere?

• 54:29Speaker 00

  We can go to Mind of Hari. We stock them seasonally. And there is a, one of the things that we found out is there is different kind of laws on how, who can be shipped. And obviously, we're not optimizing for long storage. So, but they'll be on Mind of Hari and you can always reach out to me and I'll find you and tell you where, which farmer's market we're at or whatever, and you can come swing by.

• 54:48Lenny Rachitsky?

  Well, I don't see it on Mind of Hari. So maybe by the time this comes out, put it on here, or if you're trying to.

• 54:52Speaker 00

  Put it on there. Yeah, it's under, it's on the homepage. And then when they're stocked, we put them in the shop.

• 54:57Lenny Rachitsky?

  Okay. So that means they're out of stock. All right. We're going to sell you out. Let's get all your gummy bears. With that, we've reached our very exciting lightning round. Are you ready?

• 55:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, let's do it.

• 55:07Lenny Rachitsky?

  What are two or three books you've recommended most to other people?

• 55:10Speaker 00

  The first one is called Thinking in Systems. It's the one I give kind of the team every now and then. It's just a, yeah, it's just a really good book about how I think a lot of the people say systems, or, you know, can we kind of talk about it? It could be abstract. I think it goes into real detail on how people can, you know, intervene at various parts and how to take actions at different systems. I really enjoyed that book. Not directly, maybe a book I recommend, but a book that I just read that I thought was phenomenal, just to give readers want something good. It's called Tomorrow, Tomorrow and Tomorrow. I was recommended by a friend. Have you read it?

• 55:40Lenny Rachitsky?

  I read it. Yeah, I honestly didn't love it, but I liked it a lot.

• 55:44Speaker 00

  I really, I, for some reason, I've been, I thought it was very well done. And there's a couple of chapters I reflected on. I just finished it. I thought it was, I thought it was well done. So that's one that I'll throw out there.

• 55:54Lenny Rachitsky?

  Yeah, it was very sweet. I feel like I got, it got hyped too much for me. I'm like, okay.

• 55:58Speaker 00

  Oh, I didn't know, I didn't actually know it got such publicity. Okay, that's it. The third one that I just downloaded, because I finished, I'm actually going to open up my, my audiobook and tell you, because I'm about, I don't know, an hour into it and I'm really enjoying it. It is An Immense World. I don't know if you read that one yet. Uh, it is about animals and how animals have different senses out there and it goes kind of through a set of different animals like and and kind of how they see the world and just one of those reminders that, you know, it's we're so limited sometimes in our own perception. Then kind of how dogs, for instance, they, you know, they can breathe in and take in sense even when they're breathing out. And so they're constantly, it's like vision almost. And it's just phenomenal to me to just kind of think about all the things they're probably sensing as we're going on, my dog and I are going on our walk.

• 56:42Lenny Rachitsky?

  I've learned dogs like shoot air out of their nose first before they smell to kind of clear things out.

• 56:48Speaker 00

  It's uh, they're, I mean, it's not wild. They kind of, they can probably see so much more of what happened in the history of like a, a little walk than we're able to just because of that.

• 56:57Lenny Rachitsky?

  Incredible. Next question. What is a favorite recent movie or TV show?

• 57:02Speaker 00

  Well, so one thing we try to do is watch TV as a family. It kind of brings us together a little bit. So we, uh, we are doing Star Wars with the kids, which is for the first time, which has been a really enjoyable experience, just being able to witness it through them. And then we've been going a little bit back in time. So we watched ET, which is, you know, we kind of, it's quite fun. It jogs your memory. These are phenomenal movies that we go through. I think your question is on recent TV shows that probably came out more recently.

• 57:27Lenny Rachitsky?

  Those were just as well.

• 57:28Speaker 00

  Uh, yeah, I, um, the other one I did like, I, it's not a TV show, but I, um, um, God, was it called Case? It was that podcast that came out, Case 63, I think it was called. And it was, I hope that's the right name of it, but it was a, like a, it was a sci-fi podcast. It was like 10 minutes shorts and the premise of it is someone comes from the future and is a little bit of speculative fiction and is at a psychologist. And it was, uh, it's just a phenomenal, uh, piece. I'll have to get you the real name. Maybe I can get it if you have to for the show notes.

• 57:56Lenny Rachitsky?

  Yeah, we'll edit your words and, uh,

• 57:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly.

• 57:59Lenny Rachitsky?

  Whatever's in the show notes, that's the one you meant. What is a favorite interview question you like to ask?

• 58:05Speaker 00

  I do like to ask people what kind of the most complex thing they ever built was. And I just love to understand most mostly kind of what what do they gravitate to? Like, is that something you have to do? And two, are they able to simplify it? And and I think those are two really important skills.

• 58:19Lenny Rachitsky?

  What is it that you look for in their answer that tells you it was a good answer?

• 58:23Speaker 00

  Both of those things. So first, did they take on something that was super complex? Like, really, really hard, because I think there's only a particular group of people gravitate to those kinds of problems. And I do think more and more, I mean, openly, I think that's a lot of kind of the a lot of the, in my opinion, the ways the world is going to get better by the things that are really, really hard to solve. You can think about kind of the intimacy doesn't scale, right? So when you think about how people are going to feel more connected, it's going to be kind of a lot more difficult to solve. When you think about healthcare, it's going to be very, very difficult to solve. Education is a very difficult interconnected space. And so I I think people who gravitate to then know those problems are hard, have a very special kind of gift and and and kind of a it's hard to replicate that passion. So one, did you do that?

• 59:06Speaker 00

  And then, two, I think people who really kind of understand systems are able to somehow, this is truly special. People are probably way smarter than me. They're able to simplify it. And they're able to explain it and say, this is how I looked at it, but here's how I modeled it. And here's kind of the levers and how I went after it. And, you know, even if it's nonlinear, they're able to say, this is how cause and effects works. And I'm really looking for, you know, once you did it, did you really understand it? Were you able to crack it? Or at least, did you understand why you weren't able to crack it? And I usually find this to be also the most kind of rewarding conversations.

• 59:34Lenny Rachitsky?

  Awesome. Thanks for sharing all that. Next question, what is a favorite recent product that you've discovered that you love?

• 59:42Speaker 00

  I'll give you one more dead one, you know, so my youngest just hates brushing his teeth, just was like, it was always thing. And there is, I should actually find the name of the toothbrush, but you can just Google or Amazon this and you'll figure it out. It was basically, it's like, it was this baby shark toothbrush, but it's it's a game. And you play that game for two minutes and you can try to like pick up different prizes. You brush your teeth and it turned what I loved about it, because I think it's what all great products do. It turns a moment of like annoyance to a moment of joy, right? It went like not even just like you you saw the pain point. It was like an unreasonable experience of like, now he loves it. And like, you know, it was just so well done. It's like 10 bucks and it was 10 bucks extremely well spent, so much delight. So whoever made that toothbrush, thank you.

• 1:00:23Lenny Rachitsky?

  Damn. And is it playing Baby Shark? I hope not.

• 1:00:25Speaker 00

  Well, it can, it has that feature and has that capability. But it is a small price to pay for for me to get out, you know, to enjoy.

• 1:00:35Lenny Rachitsky?

  Good times. What's something relatively minor that you've changed in your product development process that has had a big impact on your team's ability to execute?

• 1:00:44Speaker 00

  I do like to change things relatively, like every quarter or six months, kind of sit down and kind of say, what can we get better at? And the two areas I find myself innovating, if you will, innovating or tweaking the most is one is around planning, right? I think every company struggles with this and you get bigger, it probably becomes a more kind of, especially we talked about the complexity of the ecosystem. And we started this thing where just basically, we call it like orange and red priorities, which is a lot of times what people do is teams will plan bottom up, they'll come into a manager or a leader, and then the leader may shift things around or say this way. I think we've really started shifting it in a different way. We said, these are the big rocks we got to get done. We're going to get those things done first. We're going to be upfront and honest with you. And these are the things and these are priorities. And then you can

• 1:01:27Speaker 00

  kind of plan from there. And that's been, I think it's relieved a lot of the progress. So I think there's an honesty that comes with it. And that's been a big change. The others just are kind of the way we review products. That's always been a kind of thing. And my, my read is when we keep our product review process live too long, it gets a little institutionalized and people start making, you know, like long documents and stuff, right? So you always have to change that every quarter. And, and basically, I think it always comes down to the same thing, which is how do you get their problem statement quickly? And then how do you kind of design from there? But the lever that we basically put in place for that was to really shorten the time. So like, I'm trying this thing. I don't know if it's going to work, but could we get to like 15 minute reviews, basically, instead of an hour and see if that kind of alleviates some of this. So I'll

• 1:02:09Speaker 00

  let you know how it goes when we chat up next. But I, I, I'm very curious to see if this is going to be a different kind of system where we might be able to get to clarity quicker or realize we're not at clarity and then break and come back.

• 1:02:21Lenny Rachitsky?

  Reminds me of a tweet, I think I just saw, maybe it was Instagram post of teams that do stand ups while doing a plank to keep the meeting really short.

• 1:02:28Speaker 00

  That's interesting. I haven't tried that one yet, but uh, might be nothing we try next.

• 1:02:34Lenny Rachitsky?

  Last question, you've been at LinkedIn for a long time. I imagine you use LinkedIn a lot. Is there just a pro tip that you can share of how to be more successful with LinkedIn, find more value in LinkedIn, enjoy it more?

• 1:02:46Speaker 00

  The first is I do think, you know, certainly there's ways and the majority of ways that skills work is we infer skills, but I wouldn't, I, I think that there is a skills section on the profile. I think a lot of people ignore it because they don't realize that there's value in it. And, and that's changing, but I'm not sure if it's changing for everybody. And I would pay more attention to skills as we kind of get in more into skills first stuff. The second thing I would probably do, I don't know if it's that hidden, but I would check out LinkedIn Learning. I do think LinkedIn Learning is a gem and I think because it's sold largely through enterprises, a lot of people miss it and I would hope you check it out, but more importantly, tell me areas that, uh, you know, we could get better on there as well. And I hope that people will find value there.

• 1:03:22Lenny Rachitsky?

  What's the best way to find out about LinkedIn Learning? They just Google LinkedIn Learning and they'll find the?

• 1:03:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, or go to LinkedIn backslash learning. Yeah.

• 1:03:28Lenny Rachitsky?

  LinkedIn.com slash learning. Okay, great. Uh, Hari, I feel like we've opened the mind of Hari up on this podcast. I appreciate you being here. Two final questions. Where can folks find you a line if they want to reach out and how can listeners be useful to you?

• 1:03:42Speaker 00

  Well, you can find me on LinkedIn. That's an easy one. And, uh, the, uh, you know, I, I do really, really, really appreciate product feedback. Like I promise you, I take it well for those listening and two, it is, you know, going back to the kind of the heart of this conversation around complexity. It is really hard to know sometimes whatever its experience is because you're living in a very kind of abstracted ecosystem. And so the more you could just say, hey, this is working or not, and the intentions are coming from a good place. And if you, um, if you have a moment and you're not having a great experience, or are having a great experience, you could write it. I really would appreciate to hear your perspective.

• 1:04:15Lenny Rachitsky?

  Amazing. Hari, thank you so much for being here.

• 1:04:18Speaker 00

  Thanks, Lenny. It's great meeting you.

• 1:04:20Lenny Rachitsky?

  You too. Bye, everyone.

• 1:04:23Lenny Rachitsky?

  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 lennyspodcast.com. See you in the next episode.