YouSaid · the spoken record

Nikhyl Singhal

lines on the record: 98
first: 2023-06-11
most recent: 2023-06-11
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Yeah, I mean, if you think about it, it's the reality in engineering and design. So in engineering, you can be the sort of VP of engineering or CTO. And in a design, a lot of designers become design managers, a lot of them stay as crafters. And then for whatever reason and product managers, maybe because the word managers in our title, we just all became managers. Like, what about the product? What about the other side? So I actually think it's a bug that has existed for a long time that actually we're going to correct permanently now.”
2023-06-11 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a long and meaningful career | Nikhyl Singhal (Meta, Google) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To really being able to take it forward. And I got one of these ambiguities, Master. I'm an expert in domain. I'm an expert in managing organizations. I'm like, I don't need a team ambiguous expert. That's not my hard part. My hard part is actually cracking the code on this complex market or this very complicated organization where we have two teams that have different goals. You're the type of person that I want. So I think Lenny, to your question, I think the IC track is one of the best things that's going to happen for people's career. But to your point, those tracks from a promotion and from a industry how we perceive it are hard to they're not in cement yet. They're tender. You wait six months. You wait nine months. They'll become very, very strong and solid. And I think then we'll be able to lean very hard into them as a real promising crack for builders.”
2023-06-11 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a long and meaningful career | Nikhyl Singhal (Meta, Google) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They've basically been promising ICs that early promoted into management. They didn't get taught. And now they're sort of average managers and promising ICs. But now the story that they tell and what they've built is not awesome. And if I'm looking to hire, if I'm in a growth company and I'm the next hottest thing and I'm looking to hire someone and someone walks into the interview and said, look, I've managed two people before. And then I was like in the charge of this thing, but they really did the details. And then, by the way, before that, I was like early in trying to get this thing out the door. And then they picked me to be manager. I'm like, okay, that's an interesting set of experiences. I'm looking for me in my company to build something. The next person walks in and it's like, I've been an IC for that whole time. And during that time, I went from learning something to demonstrating.”
2023-06-11 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a long and meaningful career | Nikhyl Singhal (Meta, Google) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think that it's a little bit more acute now because of the backlash that we talked about between growth where Management was perceived. So in this case, management was perceived as a way to drive expansion. And so if you're in charge of expansion, you're managing the people that are doing the build. And now we're doing a lot fewer things. And so I think that's what's mandated this sort of growth in the IC track, for lack of a better term. I think it is one of the best things to happen to our industry because what's happened is in the last 10 years, and you can tell I'm particularly hard on our managers here.”
2023-06-11 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a long and meaningful career | Nikhyl Singhal (Meta, Google) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And they can invite me in. Oftentimes, the answer is, I don't need you. I actually wasn't excited about you as a manager. I don't need another layer between you and the CEO. Get out. And I'm like, that's cool. Because anything I say after that is just going to be annoying. And it's going to backfire. Now, one day they will need help. And I will be in the sidecar waiting to say perhaps I can assist. And then when you finally get to that moment where you're invited in, you pick an area or two. And then you really partner with that person on that area. You know, I can give examples on that, but I generally think that it's this invitation picking specific and then making sure we're sharing the responsibility is the key kind of set of notes that I would share with you.”
2023-06-11 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a long and meaningful career | Nikhyl Singhal (Meta, Google) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The way organizational power, not because they've earned that power, they start managing whatever they define that to be. And what I find is that you're more like the vampire knocking on the door of someone. You have to be invited in. You just can't walk through the threshold. And I think that no matter how senior the person that is the manager, you have to earn the right to be the person's manager. So maybe to be specific, if I start managing someone, the thing I'd like to understand is like, hey, well, what can I help you with?”
2023-06-11 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a long and meaningful career | Nikhyl Singhal (Meta, Google) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Three modes that people have in their head. They're like, oh, management is divide and conquering. You go there, I go there, we meet up. Or they'll say it's like riding a bike or teaching to ride a bike, I should say. Someone starts out on the bicycle. I hold your hand. I let go, and then I hope that you fly. And I think it's more like the sidecar on the motorcycle, where persons on the driving the motorcycle and I'm on the sidecar and whether I like it or not, I'm attached, but I have this relatively specific role of kind of giving counsel. And I think that that model of how do you share the steering wheel, not just say you got it or I got it or I got it for a while and then I hand it to you is the key question. And then I think that the second miss that people tend to have is they tend to, because they have power by”
2023-06-11 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a long and meaningful career | Nikhyl Singhal (Meta, Google) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so that's powerful because you're having a tremendous amount of impact. And I think that's learning is essentially a lifelong opportunity. And I think that is the type of resources that just didn't exist a decade ago. I think to answer your question around well, what are the common pitfalls? Like if you're a first time manager listening or maybe someone who's considering it, I think there are probably two quick things that I would say that you have to get brave, really thoughtful about as you enter into this journey. One is your challenge is going to be to share the steering wheel with the person or the set of people you are managing. And I think that there's this”
2023-06-11 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a long and meaningful career | Nikhyl Singhal (Meta, Google) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think that there's such a loose coupling between the skills to be successful at building things and teaching people how to build. You know, it's the difference between if you can make a good car, you must know how to make the factory that makes the car. I don't think that's true at all. And I think that this is a massive epidemic that I think is just, there's the thousand challenges that stem from this, whether it's challenges around bias, challenges around enabling coaching and teaching and solving development areas. And my hope is that one day as an industry, we find ways to improve and fix it. But podcasts like yours are actually quite meaningful steps. I would say that your podcast might be more meaningful than most L&D departments and most organizations today.”
2023-06-11 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a long and meaningful career | Nikhyl Singhal (Meta, Google) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Start by saying that In a hundred years When the archaeologists look back and they see tech in the sort of early years of tech, the first 30, 34 years, they'll say that the biggest surprise was how Much we thought it was okay to not train managers. The military probably. Didn't make that mistake for very long before they corrected it. And most immature industries really trained managers. But boy, if you're a good coder, you are ready to manage. That's the way the industry works. If you can talk, you are ready to product manage. If you can product manage and ship something out the door, you should definitely tell people what to do.”
2023-06-11 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a long and meaningful career | Nikhyl Singhal (Meta, Google) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“People hear that, and they're like, wow, I get recognized for giving this guide feedback. Sign me up. You're always trying to find way to break down that barrier.”
2023-06-11 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a long and meaningful career | Nikhyl Singhal (Meta, Google) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'd share out feedback. It's a little easier when you are a manager. But for example, most managers that are listening have a staff discussion. Maybe it's sort of awkward, but maybe you have a stand up and you are giving notes to people. So as a manager, someone will come to me and they'll give me a piece of feedback. The next Monday, when I have my staff meeting, I'll make a comment about something and I'll say, well, a lot of this came because I got this great piece of feedback from, you know, and I'll name the person. And I'm like, it really helped me see this challenge. Now, that feedback could be about me or that this project or about the team and it might be positive, it might be constructive.”
2023-06-11 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a long and meaningful career | Nikhyl Singhal (Meta, Google) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think Jules is a great, probably one of the world's best people in pulling feedback, in my experience. I think that the one that even one's up it is when I talk to Jules, Jules will look for feedback. Then he'll repeat it back to me. Better than even I presented it. And then I'd say, well, let me now feel safer to even provide, because anyone who's explaining it to a place that they all not only internalize it, but they can articulate clearly understands and values it. That's the really powerful way is that what you're saying is I just interrupt far too often. And in some ways, it's almost to a point that it's annoying. Is that a fair assessment? No, that's actually not the words I use, but that's what really gets people comfortable in sharing with you what's really going on.”
2023-06-11 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a long and meaningful career | Nikhyl Singhal (Meta, Google) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Have to create an environment of safety where people feel like there is no worry about retaliation or concern, et cetera. And the more comfortable people are about giving feedback to you and the more you have the skills to pull it and you don't trust formal or you don't trust manager, the better shot you have of truly understanding what that real issue is in solving it.”
2023-06-11 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a long and meaningful career | Nikhyl Singhal (Meta, Google) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Ignore the formal feedback. Let's have a real conversation with my peers on how our teams are doing. The signal that comes out are dramatically different than the formal feedback. So what you're looking for when you feel like you're in this situation where you're not being seen and it might be because there's a real issue, what you really want to dial into is let me get the ground truth as to what people are thinking. And you have to have very strong listener skills where we all have been in the discussion where you're giving feedback to someone and the next thing that they tell you is they justify how you're wrong. You miss this. Let me tell you about exactly why that was situation that you're using wasn't you have to be great at pulling feedback, listening to it. You have to triangulate it from people like that don't see you all the time, that do see you all the time, your peers.”
2023-06-11 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a long and meaningful career | Nikhyl Singhal (Meta, Google) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The cheap answer is you have to get real feedback, not formal feedback. I think that the more scale the company is, the more they have these systems in place, which provide formal feedback. But honestly, you know, we've run experiments where we said, let's”
2023-06-11 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a long and meaningful career | Nikhyl Singhal (Meta, Google) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Perhaps he doesn't see it. But the promotion committee does. The individual refuses to hear it, which is a very common one. Or they hear it and they just don't want to change it. And they don't do it because they're arrogant. They do it because it's like, this is who I am. You want me to be X and I'm Y and that's what a Y is and I don't want to be X. This is the hardest one because this is where coaching and development and self-awareness come in.”
2023-06-11 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a long and meaningful career | Nikhyl Singhal (Meta, Google) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then they get frustrated when they can't do that. And leadership takes longer to absorb. It's more soft skills. It's more subtle. It's oftentimes it's based on impact, which is long times lagging. And that tends to be frustrating. And so if listeners are like, I know I'm used to being promoted annually and now I'm a leader and I'm not moving as quickly. It's time for me to go. I'm like, well, maybe that's working as intended. And so impatience is number three. And then the fourth one I think is about 50% of the cases where it's really there is a development area, but it isn't quite connected to the individual. The listener has a development area. It's substantive. The manager is poor at identifying it.”
2023-06-11 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a long and meaningful career | Nikhyl Singhal (Meta, Google) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Have succeeded because they have set their goals to be more aggressive than what was essentially average achievable. By default, we expect you to be two years in this role. They're like, great, I'll see in a year.”
2023-06-11 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a long and meaningful career | Nikhyl Singhal (Meta, Google) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, this is not as present in hypergrowth because the next rule always did exist. There was always growth. There was always hiring. They're always hiring people above you, below you, et cetera. Now, I think there's lots of examples of people who are really qualified and working at the next level. But the job doesn't exist. And so you can't really create that job and ask them to be working at that next job if their position is mostly the previous one. And that, again, I feel like it's not that satisfying because it means you're still being held back. But it's radically different than if you're unqualified. These two are sort of more, the system is not in a position to advocate. The third is when you are being impatient. And I think the hardest ones that I think I've worked with is the highest performers.”
2023-06-11 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a long and meaningful career | Nikhyl Singhal (Meta, Google) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Who doesn't see said magic? And in that case, if you have the magic, you're in a bad setting and you just need to change. That could be a shift within the project. It could find a manager who sees it. It could be leaving the company. I think the second that's very common now, Lenny, and I think it's coming up a ton, is the next rule doesn't exist.”
2023-06-11 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a long and meaningful career | Nikhyl Singhal (Meta, Google) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it's a great question. I think that we want to kind of understand why and oftentimes asking your manager won't reveal the answer. So Limi, you'll start with that. I think that The answer of what you do is correlated with what's the real reason And I think that there may be, I'll suggest, four kind of common things I've seen that really hold people back. And then depending on your environment, you have to decide how many of these apply. So I think the number one is that you just don't have advocacy. You know, you need someone to see the magic in you to be promoted. And there is many of your listeners who have that magic, but maybe have a manager or a promotion team. It doesn't always have to be the manager itself.”
2023-06-11 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a long and meaningful career | Nikhyl Singhal (Meta, Google) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Want to know that story, and just like Amazon talks about building the press release before they start creating a product, think about the story. Think about the skill, then solve your day-to-day, your week-to-week, your month to month, your performance review. That's my biggest advice to ICs.”
2023-06-11 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a long and meaningful career | Nikhyl Singhal (Meta, Google) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I want to know that you pick up one of these as early as possible. So, maybe you become an expert in domain. Maybe you become a great crafter. Maybe you really think through how to manage growth. Growth is another one that I would add to the list. But picking a lane is kind of goal number one. And then maybe goal number two is having a story to tell to that next employer and that next next. You know, what I worry about is sometimes when I'm in an interview and you and I have probably done hundreds and you're talking to someone and then they talk about those early jobs and they just sort of said they were there. This happened. And it's very hard to connect. Like, tell me exactly what you learned and what you did”
2023-06-11 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a long and meaningful career | Nikhyl Singhal (Meta, Google) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Probably two answers that I would share. One is they want to build something that they, as much as possible, are world class in. So if you think about the different types of product ambiguities that exist in industry, you can be a great crafter. You could be incredibly strong at market ambiguity. You could understand how to navigate markets and create something new that doesn't exist. Can be great at organizational ambiguity. You know, I know how to take complex teams that have complex goals and solvent inside the building problem. You can be a domain expert. I'm an ML expert. I'm a really strong hardware piano. Could be a team expert. I just really thrive in managing managers and I just know how to get the balance right. Being a product manager means you're confronted with maybe all five or maybe more of these.”
2023-06-11 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a long and meaningful career | Nikhyl Singhal (Meta, Google) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There are counterexamples. I think the counterpoint is this is the Biggest role that you feel like you could get and you have an appetite to sort of learn at the, like I'm on the executive team. I'm not going to get that somewhere else. That experience is career additive. I want that moment. Great. Sometimes I see loyalty come in. This was my baby. I feel a commitment to the team, the team that I've made, et cetera. I actually respect that. Think that you have to put bounds on that. You know, I think that you should have that conversation. But the learning position, the loyalty tend to be the primary reasons to maybe delay the decision. But fear of finding another job is a bad reason, but is an often common reason as well.”
2023-06-11 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a long and meaningful career | Nikhyl Singhal (Meta, Google) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For me, it's always around this pull, the sort of how much work do you have to do to basically generate pull? So right now with OpenAI, for example, we're seeing ridiculous pull, but we may not be seeing, for example, massive revenue or profitability. So that's the reason why I tend to feel like you can kind of tell by how hard it is to acquire your users. When companies are putting very little in marketing and their people coming into the door, or there's such an easy sale, you've got it. And I think that this sucking pull kind of concept feels like the most appropriate way to define it, as opposed to the sort of unit economics of acquisition and time to pay back. There are lots of mathy ways to do it. But early on, you can tell, how hard are you working to bring people in the door?”
2023-06-11 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a long and meaningful career | Nikhyl Singhal (Meta, Google) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As an employee, I think you have almost no recourse because you almost have to start over in terms of it's a new four-year investment. I think that as a founder, you can recap your company. You can reset your stock price. You could reissue. You know, you can make those hard decisions and you can maybe return some of the money to the board and still continue. Or you can pull the plug and restart the company that maybe you really wanted to. But I think the founder's in a better position, but they also have a lot more to lose and far more constraints. But employees, if you listen to this and come to this conclusion, a lot of times the listeners here have or more of their compensation is inequity. And we just concluded that most of their equity may not be worth anything. In which case, are you willing to take a half pay cut or work for 20% of what you can get in the market? My question is, that seems to be quite concerning the opportunity cost is just too rich.”
2023-06-11 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a long and meaningful career | Nikhyl Singhal (Meta, Google) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think that the moment that you are reframing the core product, trying to find that product market implies that this company's valuation needs to be a pre-product market fit valuation. So, the two questions you ask yourself the day after we listen to this podcast is, hey, are we scaling a product we have customers that love us and we have a tremendous sucking sound? Or are we trying to find that customer sucking sound? And if the answer is we're still trying to find it. And then you're like, is your valuation hundreds of millions or tens of millions? And if the answer is hundreds or more and you're still trying to find that sucking sound, you're an X-growth company.”
2023-06-11 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a long and meaningful career | Nikhyl Singhal (Meta, Google) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We need to go find product market fit, but doing that with 300 people and expectations of hitting a multi-billion dollar valuation just isn't going to happen. And so that's the reason why I'm like danger. This is not the company to join. This is the company to leave. Find another phase times a wasting. And I worry very much that people aren't getting the message.”
2023-06-11 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a long and meaningful career | Nikhyl Singhal (Meta, Google) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But in some ways they're still hiring or they're still seeking the next product. The sad truth is that many of their contemporary companies that went public are worth 10% or less than what they were worth back then. And these companies are privately held. And so they're sort of sleeping in the shadows. And my fear is from a career point of view so many tech professionals are in these organizations or joining these organizations with the expectation that they'll make money on their equity, that they'll continue to do fine. And my sense is we're going to see even in the second half of this year, lots of boards pulling back, taking their capital back, companies essentially saying, hey, we're capitalized like we're a scaled ocean liner.”
2023-06-11 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a long and meaningful career | Nikhyl Singhal (Meta, Google) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is harder to raise, but companies started to focus on their core products. And you've talked about it on this podcast, just how many layoffs and restructuring and managers moving to ICs and all of that work is happening. Well, the one funny pocket was there's these large number of growth companies who have raised substantive dollars. So they're not going to run out of capital in 2022 or 2023. What's going to happen is they actually have quite long periods of time. So you don't see them raising new rounds. You don't see them laying off.”
2023-06-11 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a long and meaningful career | Nikhyl Singhal (Meta, Google) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I have a pretty strong opinion on this that I think that for 10 years we created the HyperGO Blitz scaling type phenomenon. And there was a lot of good reasons for that, some of which were just distribution platforms just got so good. You could take out Facebook ads, you could grow with Google and you could grow in 18 months that maybe took previous companies 10 years. So I think that the idea was that all of these companies could instantly grow when they found product market fit and that birthed all these unicorns. And then suddenly 18 months ago, it almost like the music stopped, 0% interest rate went away. And it became a lot, a lot harder to find growth through just fueling it with capital. And I think that the sudden change meant that not only capital”
2023-06-11 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a long and meaningful career | Nikhyl Singhal (Meta, Google) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'd prefer that. I think it unfortunately kicks out Netflix, but it also. Don't pay homage to Adobe and Salesforce and a number of other great companies. So I think”
2023-06-11 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a long and meaningful career | Nikhyl Singhal (Meta, Google) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that many executives are hired because they are to bring expertise of the next phase of organization to this company. So we're growing. We want to go after the next phase. We want someone who's has expertise. The magma or fang companies, however you want to describe them. They really have challenges and expertise at how to build things at scale, how to manage millions or billions of users and customers. So the advantage is to be successful at that is an endorsement. Having said that, those specific companies experiences can be substituted for other later stage companies. But if you're coming in as an executive to bring someone to the next level and you've never experienced it, it's a very difficult thing to get that executive experience and to be like a C-level for that growth company.”
2023-06-11 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a long and meaningful career | Nikhyl Singhal (Meta, Google) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Can't really go wrong if you're looking at those experiences and you're looking at inside the building problems and outside the building problems. Those are maybe consumer problems and business to business problems. The more diverse career you have, the better builder you are and that usually comes out being satisfied. But the idea of just doing that because you think it's going to make your chances better for the next job maybe scares me and it feels very much in service of some future dream that is not build oriented. And I think that can be leading to sadness.”
2023-06-11 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a long and meaningful career | Nikhyl Singhal (Meta, Google) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, I think collecting labels does feel shallow to most builders. Because if you're a product person, you probably got into the business because you like building stuff. And frankly, not just product people want to do that. A lot of technical people want to just build stuff. And then the question is, is the things that you're working on in service of building? And then when you ask people where you're happy is, they always say, well, I was able to build this thing. And oftentimes they don't care whether it worked or not, which is kind of ironic. So for me, when I see people chasing logos, I think about it as well, I'm actually really a big fan of a diverse set of experiences that I think learning about pre-product market fit than seeing smoke turn into fire and witnessing and maybe shepherding that and then taking fire and turning it into something great and being an experience set where you can see the movie and these different frames makes you just a better builder and so you”
2023-06-11 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a long and meaningful career | Nikhyl Singhal (Meta, Google) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You're thinking about the sort of long term arc, and as I said, maybe the job after next. And then you need to look at the promotion in service because how many people have you and I talked to who said, well, then as soon as I get promoted, I'm going to leave. So then I'm like, well, okay. Then what's the promotion and service of? And you get into that conversation, which tends to be again very long-term focus.”
2023-06-11 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a long and meaningful career | Nikhyl Singhal (Meta, Google) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'd say the biggest one in workplace is focusing career and promotion together. And I think that there's perhaps a light connection between promotion and career addition. But I feel like too many people are, you know, the moment we talk about career, they're like, well, let me talk to you. I want to have a career talk with you. And I said, sure, why don't we find some time? We sit down together and they're like, well, what do you think you need to do to get to promotion? And then I said, well, promotion is our system at this company to see you moving forward. And it's pretty clear in terms of levels and what you're doing and what the process is and who makes the decision. And that's pretty short term because you can ask, hey, it's two years away. How do I make it 18 months? It's a classic. But in reality, if you're thinking career,”
2023-06-11 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a long and meaningful career | Nikhyl Singhal (Meta, Google) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And maybe I should stay, and maybe I should learn how to deal with some of this ambiguity. That's why I want people to be a bit more longer term and not so short-term focused.”
2023-06-11 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a long and meaningful career | Nikhyl Singhal (Meta, Google) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Lateral moves are by definition not forward moves. So what I try to tell people to think about is work backwards from your end state. Almost think of career as a product. So if you're building a good product, you think about, well, here's what a great product would look like, and then you break it into version one, version two, version three. Well, in some ways, the reason I called my newsletter, my podcast, the skip is because I always think about what's not the next job, but the one after it. Maybe think about not your boss's job, but your boss's boss's job and what do I need to think about to get there. And in many ways, you may think, well, okay, if I need to found a company one day, and that's my job after next, then you want to look at maybe your current job and then maybe the next job in service of that. And that may lead you to saying, hey, maybe I need a grid of doubt.”
2023-06-11 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a long and meaningful career | Nikhyl Singhal (Meta, Google) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I tend to be long term focused in most of my counsel and maybe. To give you an example of what a short term focus career kind of framework looks like is I really dislike my boss. I feel like this company doesn't have it anymore. There's just too hard to ship things. Those are all maybe true statements, but they probably exist in many of the jobs that one would consider if they were.”
2023-06-11 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a long and meaningful career | Nikhyl Singhal (Meta, Google) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Annie is someone I learned from and helped talk with. And she's also part of a community that I also build on the side where we pulled a bunch of CPOs together. And they've been building community. I'm a big fan of community and learning. And that's she's part of that as well.”
2023-06-11 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a long and meaningful career | Nikhyl Singhal (Meta, Google) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We'll give it anonymous because I want people to feel like they can always call me in and not feel like that. I don't tend to share the names of most people.”
2023-06-11 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a long and meaningful career | Nikhyl Singhal (Meta, Google) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so I find those are the most substantive times to help people is when they're in moments of dilemma or forks in the road. And that's why the number is more closer to hundreds.”
2023-06-11 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a long and meaningful career | Nikhyl Singhal (Meta, Google) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Good question. I guess I haven't thought about it from that perspective. I would say hundreds is probably the way to sort of answer the question. And a little bit has to do with how we define being a mentor. I know that was supposed to be a simple question. I'm going to give you a complicated answer. But I think that I started out just helping people, you know, 10, 15 years ago trying to help them through their careers. I find the whole area really interesting. And then what happened, it was just hard to scale because people were always like, hey, can you find time? So now what I do is I tend to help and coach hundreds of folks through transitions. So if they're in a moment where they're trying to decide between another job, if they're trying to decide to leave, if they're having sort of an alert at work, I call them 9-1-1 calls. I take a few 9-1-1 calls every week and from a relatively large group of people.”
2023-06-11 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a long and meaningful career | Nikhyl Singhal (Meta, Google) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You'll keep working because you don't know nothing else to do, but you'll be sadder, or you'll find ways to create war when peace is needed.”
2023-06-11 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a long and meaningful career | Nikhyl Singhal (Meta, Google) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When I was a kid and I was growing up in the Midwest, entertainment was like going to the dog tracks. The way that they motivated the dogs was they had these like fake rabbits. These tails would go around faster than the dogs, which would then motivate the dogs to go around in circles. And what was interesting is the moment that the dogs, if they accidentally touched the rabbit, they would never run again. Because there was like, well, what's next? I've achieved what I was looking for. And so I think this happens a ton is like your listeners are spending time focused on life. Well, one day I will be X. I will be that vice president. I will have more money. I will have built something. I will have started a company. But they don't think about what happens next. What's the second thing? What's your career next look like? How do you ensure that you are always going to have something important and motivating to do with your career? Otherwise,”
2023-06-11 · Lenny's Podcast · Building a long and meaningful career | Nikhyl Singhal (Meta, Google) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source