YouSaid · the spoken record

Farhan Thawar

lines on the record: 121
first: 2024-12-19
most recent: 2024-12-19
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Example because so it's such an intense activity two people on one machine, you can get so much done when two people are working together, not being distracted by the internet and distractions and just focus on writing like the solution to the problem at hand. And it's so tiring that usually when people switch on to pair programming, they sleep like 10, 12 hours a night the first few nights because it's so intense. You're working so hard. For me, that intensity actually leads to like extraordinary outcomes, even if you don't have to put in more hours. Like I think most people, you probably hear this all the time. Everyone says, oh yeah, like work hard and like do more hours when you're young, whatever. I'm like, what if you just did more per minute? Right? Like quickly get through things. I think there's another unintuitive fact is that people who are really good can actually output high quality collateral quickly. So like”
2024-12-19 · Lenny's Podcast · How Shopify builds a high-intensity culture | Farhan Thawar (VP and Head of Eng) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so I think there's a few things. One, I have this fundamental belief that one hour is one hour. Like it's the same hour, right? If you spend an hour, I spend an hour. It's the same time that goes by. And if I just expend more calories in that hour, right? Like we both are, you know, let's say we both work nine to five. If I can just get more done in the nine to five, we have both the time has elapsed the same for us, but I just got more done. And that allows me, of course, then to be like, hey, I'm going to take my kid to soccer and do other stuff. We can still do the same things out of work, but during work, I just want to try to get as much done as possible during the time versus expanding the time. And I can give you an example, right? I used to work at a company where, you know, it was like, I work 12 hours a day, but I was playing foozeball in the middle of the day, and then we'd go for a coffee break. And like, you kind of do these things. And of course, the time expanded to 12 hours versus, you know, trying to compress into that eight hour day and pair programming is a great.”
2024-12-19 · Lenny's Podcast · How Shopify builds a high-intensity culture | Farhan Thawar (VP and Head of Eng) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was fun to learn about that world, but it was different than what I was doing. And so if I looked across my framework, it kind of was violating all the things that I was trying to work. I wasn't working with the smartest people anymore. I was on IC. I wasn't learning as much as I could be learning. And so I wasn't on this and I wasn't having a lot of impact. I was like, oh, wait a sec, this is completely, you know, not aligned. And then I just told the team, hey, I plan on resigning. And that, by the way, led to great other things because I'm in investor and new companies that have spun out from there. And like, it was a great experience. I'm just saying it. At the time lended me to say, hey, you're not actually focused on the right things.”
2024-12-19 · Lenny's Podcast · How Shopify builds a high-intensity culture | Farhan Thawar (VP and Head of Eng) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, sure. So, I mean, so this happened when I was at my previous a few companies ago, we were running a mobile company called Extreme Labs. That was the one that Chamath was the major investor in. And so we worked with them directly. And what I realized was, and so the company was amazing. We worked on it for many years. It was a mobile app development company. We got to work on mobile apps for the biggest brands in the world, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Vine, the NFL, NBA, Bloomberg, Slack. You name it. We worked on those mobile apps. And this is right when the iPhone and Android were really gaining steam in like 09 to 2013 era. And then we eventually got acquired by Pivotal. And over time, my role at Pivotal, Pivotal and Pivotal Labs, changed from, hey, I was running the biggest office in the world. I was running the biggest pair programming office and the big fan of pair programming to one in which we were really trying to attach consulting to like the product. And I ended up being like a field CTO, which really was.”
2024-12-19 · Lenny's Podcast · How Shopify builds a high-intensity culture | Farhan Thawar (VP and Head of Eng) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Actually, to the point of like I actually sent my framework to a recruiter one time and I said, hey, this thing, because they kept going back and forth to me. And I go, hey, this doesn't align with my framework. So it really saves me time from not being distracted, but it also forced me to think about kind of every year I can reevaluate what I'm doing and look at the framework and say, is this true to my values? Now, my wife will say this, that I'm like a robot. When I realize that my framework is being violated, I will resign. like instantly and I've done that before. So without even having another job or anything, I just go like, oh, my framework is being violated and then resign. So there's this thing where I just, I know what I enjoy working on and that framework helps me find it. And so I encourage everyone, anybody looking for a job. I always say, write down a framework. You can use mine as inspiration, right? But figure out what you care about and make sure that what you're working on lines up with that.”
2024-12-19 · Lenny's Podcast · How Shopify builds a high-intensity culture | Farhan Thawar (VP and Head of Eng) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it sounds funny, but like me and you talked about it, that framework I wrote down, which I tweet out me writing that down changed how I picked jobs forever, right? Because I kind of had this lull after my first job in between where I was trying to figure out why nothing felt as exciting as my first job. And it turns out that it took me to sit down and be like, what do I actually care about? And you get people can get confused. I get confused all the time, by the way, by things that are not on my framework. So for example, a good one title, company, money, all these things can confuse you because you could have somebody say recruiter messages you and says, hey, by the way, here's a new job and here's the compensation. You're like, oh my God, like this is exciting. And if you don't have a written down framework of the things you actually care about, it's very hard to be distracted, right? So very hard not to be distracted. You get distracted by that. So instead, I look at the framework and go, does this align with my framework?”
2024-12-19 · Lenny's Podcast · How Shopify builds a high-intensity culture | Farhan Thawar (VP and Head of Eng) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Pair with these people because I'm altogether too reasonable and there's no way to for me to become unreasonable. And so I have to kind of merge with these people. And so that is, again, something that I specifically have sought out. And even when I was starting my own company in 2015, I actually sat down and wrote a list of all the unreasonable people that I knew in Toronto. And I went down the list and met every single one of these entrepreneurs to figure out, are we API compatible? And could I work with them? And I ended up picking one of them and starting a company.”
2024-12-19 · Lenny's Podcast · How Shopify builds a high-intensity culture | Farhan Thawar (VP and Head of Eng) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's interesting because I didn't, yeah, again, this is like looking back, you're like, wait a sec. I didn't plan it this way. Like, there's no way you could plan it, right? I'm going to work for a different billionaire every decade. That's not how it works. But they're similar. They're mostly different people, but they're similar in one thing is that they have an irrational view of what the world should look like over the next decade or so. They're very long-term thinkers. They're irrational in that they'll look and say, hey, 10, 15, 20, 25 years. This is what the world's going to look like. And I'm not good at seeing that vision, but I'm good at trying to move towards that vision 1% a week. And so the melding of the two, I know where I'm good and I'm good at like kind of pushing the ball forward. And if they're good at the long-term vision, we can both align to say like, you're good at this thing. I'm good at this thing. How do we, why don't we merge forces? And so that is something that has resonated with me is like, how do I find these irrational, like, you know, all progress depends on the unreasonable man, right? Like, how do I?”
2024-12-19 · Lenny's Podcast · How Shopify builds a high-intensity culture | Farhan Thawar (VP and Head of Eng) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, yeah Yeah, so how about this? I heard that's the dumbest fucking question, and then recently I heard, I've already explained this to you three times. Like, because I kept asking and I didn't understand. And literally, I got this message back saying, I've already explained this to you three times. I'm like, okay, like I still don't get it. So my goal there is not to annoy the person, but it's to understand in the content, right? And actually, by the way, I say these were like, I save them. Like, I literally screenshotted because I'm like, remember this? It doesn't matter. I'm trying to learn.”
2024-12-19 · Lenny's Podcast · How Shopify builds a high-intensity culture | Farhan Thawar (VP and Head of Eng) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Which, by the way, is part of some sales training, which is like go and get 10 nos. And, you know, like, like, that's, but I haven't done that. But I have been in many situations with many sharp people, business people, successful people, who have said to me, like, turn around and say, that's the stupidest fucking question I've ever heard. I've definitely had that happen to me. And I'm like, all right, let's move on to the next question.”
2024-12-19 · Lenny's Podcast · How Shopify builds a high-intensity culture | Farhan Thawar (VP and Head of Eng) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know. I mean, I kind of grew up working retail. Like people come into the store, and then they would say, Hey, and you're on working on commission, and they're not always buying stuff. And if they don't buy it, you don't make any money. And so maybe just the fact of like going up and forcing myself to talk to people and then trying to get them. And maybe you spend an hour with a client and then they don't buy anything, but you're getting that reaction of a bunch of negatives. And all you have to do is say, okay, and just go to the next customer. Like you can't really dwell on it and be like, oh my God, like this is going to like my whole day is ruined. But instead, you have to learn from that and say, okay, let me try this. Let me try that. And it's not easy, but it was a way to kind of build up some confidence. And people say this, like telemarketing or, you know, like there's a bunch of things you can do to get a lot of rejection. Cold calling is another one. And that can lead you to actually building up resistance. I don't know if I'm genetically better at it or not. I just think that I literally don't care if I look dumb. Like I've always said like the dumb thing. I'm not doing things on purpose to get.”
2024-12-19 · Lenny's Podcast · How Shopify builds a high-intensity culture | Farhan Thawar (VP and Head of Eng) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is something around trying dumb things and saying dumb things half the time, by the way, when I say something dumb, people go, I had the same question. They just were scared to say it.”
2024-12-19 · Lenny's Podcast · How Shopify builds a high-intensity culture | Farhan Thawar (VP and Head of Eng) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I think, I mean, it sounds funny, but again, I'm the one who's always trying like super dumb things. And sometimes they work. And, you know, like even my wife hates that I try these things even at home, right? I'll just like, you know, what's an example? Like, you know, I might be like a new washing machine and I might try some weird mode with some clothes. And I'm like, oh, you ruin the clothes. I'm like, okay, but now I know that this mode should not be used. But maybe I would have uncovered that there's some super fast quick wash that I can do in 20 minutes that now saves us 40 minutes of wash time every single time we use the washing machine. So there's things like that, but I will ruin lots of clothes trying to do that. But same at work. We'll try things. And sometimes it can lead to disaster, hopefully not, but you can imagine people trying to like, oh, let me try this new configuration of GCP and maybe we'll get some benefit, but maybe we'll take Shopify down. Like, we don't want to do that. So you want to have some sort of guardrails.”
2024-12-19 · Lenny's Podcast · How Shopify builds a high-intensity culture | Farhan Thawar (VP and Head of Eng) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“State of uncomfort by going into these rooms and saying, I don't know anything. And it's harder. And I agree with you, you don't want to do dumb things. Like, oh, let's just do this thing in a dumb way. That's not what I mean. I mean, let's do the, let's try to do the hard thing that we can learn from. And by the way, it happens to be on the path. It's just, it might take more manual work or it might not be the way most people do it, but we think we can learn more from that path.”
2024-12-19 · Lenny's Podcast · How Shopify builds a high-intensity culture | Farhan Thawar (VP and Head of Eng) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One real one is to force the people because I find that my path has always focused on trying to pick the best learning journey. Like where can I learn the most? And for me, everyone's different. Like some people might learn better from like books or the domain they're in. But for me, I learn a lot from people. And so I try to put myself in those harder rooms on purpose. There was a time when I was doing my MBA and financial engineering, by the way. And I'm a tech guy. I'm still a tech guy. And all these people were going into like finance jobs. There was a point where somebody said to me, why are you in this class? Because they knew that I was doing it for fun, right? And so it was because it was the learning journey. And so I would say a big part of it for me is, yes, there's the how do you win even if you lose because if it goes poorly, you can still come out of it with skills. But if you actually take the hard path, you'll have these intense working relationships with smart people that, again, will continue on in your life. And that also just forces you to be in this constant.”
2024-12-19 · Lenny's Podcast · How Shopify builds a high-intensity culture | Farhan Thawar (VP and Head of Eng) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would say to them, hey, you know, all these companies you're interested in, Shopify might be one of them. Why don't you look at the API docs and build something, build a Shopify app, build an admin extension, like build something on top of Shopify? Even if you don't get a job at Shopify, right, which is maybe your goal, you've learned something. You've built something, you have things in your GitHub repo now, and you can show people, you're learning about the product that might translate to a job you might get somewhere else. But so I think that even though it's harder, right? Of course, you can't everyday build an app on a different platform. Maybe you can once a day, you will learn something in the hard path. And the same thing happened to me in taking hard courses. I would get worse marks, but I ended up meeting smarter people in those courses because they were there for the same reason I was because the content was hard. So that's something that I've just realized in my life that if I do the hard thing and I just naturally tend towards doing that, like I ended up doing, I went to Waterloo and I did a minor in electrical engineering on top of computer science. And when I did my MBA, I did a minor in financial engineering.”
2024-12-19 · Lenny's Podcast · How Shopify builds a high-intensity culture | Farhan Thawar (VP and Head of Eng) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But the short version is that if you have a choice and you choose the easy thing and it works, great. If you choose the hard thing and it works, great. Like you kind of did more work. But if it doesn't work and you chose the easy thing, you've actually not learned anything because you kind of chose the like you haven't done a lot of work. You haven't probably worked with the smartest people because they don't usually, they're not usually around in the easy path. And what happens is you've gone through this exercise and now you're like, I have kind of lost. I lost the choice or I was trying to do something for me. But if you do the hard path and it doesn't work, actually you still kind of win because you've now done something hard. You've probably worked with smart people. You've learned something along the way that is like valuable. And I can give you like a quick example. So I meet lots of like job seekers. And they're like, I go, what are you doing to try to find a job? I'm like, I'm sending out 10 resumes a day. I'm like, okay, that sounds like kind of easy. And like, are you really learning anything from sending out 10 resumes a day versus?”
2024-12-19 · Lenny's Podcast · How Shopify builds a high-intensity culture | Farhan Thawar (VP and Head of Eng) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think, I mean, I have ideas on all where all three of those things came from. And I think that it is something that if you look back on my career, I've hit points on each of those things. But I don't think at the onset I knew that that's what I was doing. But it turns out in retrospect, that's what I ended up doing.”
2024-12-19 · Lenny's Podcast · How Shopify builds a high-intensity culture | Farhan Thawar (VP and Head of Eng) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I have been in many situations with many sharp people who have said to me that's the stupidest question I've ever heard. My goal there is not to annoy the person, but it's to understand the content.”
2024-12-19 · Lenny's Podcast · How Shopify builds a high-intensity culture | Farhan Thawar (VP and Head of Eng) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Everyone says, Oh, yeah, like work hard and do more hours when you're young, whatever. I'm like, what if you just did more per minute?”
2024-12-19 · Lenny's Podcast · How Shopify builds a high-intensity culture | Farhan Thawar (VP and Head of Eng) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you do the hard path and it doesn't work, actually, you still kind of win because you've now done something hard. You've probably worked with smart people. You've learned something along the way that is like valuable. I meet lots of job seekers. I go, what are you doing to try to find a job? Are you really learning anything from sending out 10 resumes a day? Why don't you look at the API docs and build something? Even if you don't get a job at Shopify, you've learned something.”
2024-12-19 · Lenny's Podcast · How Shopify builds a high-intensity culture | Farhan Thawar (VP and Head of Eng) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source