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Noam Lovinsky

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69
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2024-03-17
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2024-03-17
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  1. “I mean, look, I don't know that it's a perfect answer, but I think the reality is that what kills most projects, most early companies, is stamina. And I think that you all need to work on kind of being more resilient about kind of like, I remember at Thumbtack, Marco, the CEO, we used to say that it feels like we're running uphill and chewing glass. And you kind of like, that's right. Like we want to do that. That's good for us. Take our medicine. So you want to practice that sort of resiliency. But ultimately, I think that what starts to happen is you start to lose the stamina and you're just not bringing your best self to the situation. And so many of these things that are like so high ambiguity where you don't know exactly what to build or you don't know exactly, you're not getting the signal you need or the feedback you need.”

    2024-03-17 · Lenny's Podcast · The happiness and pain of product management | Noam Lovinsky (Grammarly, Facebook, YouTube, Thumbtack) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “Like high quality customers. And so, if we really try to make a great customer experience that attracts more customers, helps them find the right pros, provides the highest quality customers, then that will therefore be better for the pros. And so that's how we should prioritize them. So that's, and if we do those things right, then the business will benefit, right? And so doing things like raising prices because we think it's good for the business, even though it causes liquidity issues in the marketplace, might be a little bit of a local maxima, right? Locally optimizing rather than globally optimizing. So I think sometimes in these sorts of questions, trying to establish some set of guiding principles that help navigate some of these more ambiguous or thorny questions can be really helpful.”

    2024-03-17 · Lenny's Podcast · The happiness and pain of product management | Noam Lovinsky (Grammarly, Facebook, YouTube, Thumbtack) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Really helpful. Like at Thumbtack, we had principals about which sides of the marketplace we wanted to serve in which order and kind of when we served Thumbtack, right? So it was customers first pros second and then thumbtack last. And that's actually the first two saying thumbtack last is like the easy thing to say, actually doing it in action, I think, is a very different thing. But that first one of like, should we, you know, especially when you're starting a marketplace as you know well, Lenny, like supply is so critical, like many marketplaces live and die by the quality and liquidity in supply. And so why would you focus on customers first in the thumb pack perspective and supply are the pros, the people that you hire? Well, we always just felt that what the pros need from us is more customers. What the pros need from us is like”

    2024-03-17 · Lenny's Podcast · The happiness and pain of product management | Noam Lovinsky (Grammarly, Facebook, YouTube, Thumbtack) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “It's a great question. I mean, I think ideally, things that are best for the customer, there's high overlap with that with things that are best for the business, but not always, right? And I think figuring out some principles that help kind of guide those sorts of conflicts can be really.”

    2024-03-17 · Lenny's Podcast · The happiness and pain of product management | Noam Lovinsky (Grammarly, Facebook, YouTube, Thumbtack) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Hunter, Shashir, et cetera, to have that kind of the instinct that the right thing will happen. Like this will be better for me and the broader team”

    2024-03-17 · Lenny's Podcast · The happiness and pain of product management | Noam Lovinsky (Grammarly, Facebook, YouTube, Thumbtack) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “It's a healthy culture and organization, I should be okay. And I think that the other thing is just over the years, I got extremely lucky. The first job that I got out of school was an incredible group of people. And it gave me a nose for talent. It gave me a nose for great feels like and what a high functioning team feels like. And it's hard to kind of know that without experiencing that. And so in the moments, YouTube was also one of those teams, like Grammarly is one of those teams. If Thumtak was one of those teams, being able to sniff that out when you're trying to kind of choose the next team is very important. But I think that's another thing that gave me confidence. Like I learned, you know, these people well enough.”

    2024-03-17 · Lenny's Podcast · The happiness and pain of product management | Noam Lovinsky (Grammarly, Facebook, YouTube, Thumbtack) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “Yeah, I mean, I think having a broader view of the company's strategy, having an instinct for like what we should be doing and why and how I might prioritize all of these investments if I were given the opportunity to do that. I think like internalizing that and understanding that and then trying to align whatever is under your influence towards that overall goal is very helpful and made me feel like”

    2024-03-17 · Lenny's Podcast · The happiness and pain of product management | Noam Lovinsky (Grammarly, Facebook, YouTube, Thumbtack) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “Actually, report to Hunter. Like, I think this would work better if we kind of combined the organizations this way and then we divided and conquered this way. And again, like very atypical. No one has ever come to me in my career and said, I would like you to layer me in this other person. But in that moment, I was just like, this is how I will do better work. This is how I will get better support. I will be kind of like happier and more productive. And it will be better for the team. And you know what? Like for me anyway, I was right. And we made that change. And Hunter was a fantastic manager and support at YouTube. I like learned a ton, grew a lot. And then eventually when he moved on, you know, Shashir took over the organization and then I moved into the viewer part of the organization, which is where I spent the.”

    2024-03-17 · Lenny's Podcast · The happiness and pain of product management | Noam Lovinsky (Grammarly, Facebook, YouTube, Thumbtack) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “Career choice that I made shortly thereafter is then when I was put in that role, I really struggled in that role. I was reporting to the CEO at the time, a guy named Sauer Kamungar, who's also awesome, Google's sixth employee, and just learned a ton from him, like an incredible strategic thinker. But he was asking me questions that I felt like they were from a different planet. I was like, I didn't know what they meant. And he just thought at a different, in a different way, a different level, a different scale. And that's still something that I was learning. Eventually, I figured it out. But I was really struggling in that moment. And I had a really good relationship with both Hunter and Shashir. And they really helped me through that. And eventually I went to Salar and said, you know, hey, I think I should.”

    2024-03-17 · Lenny's Podcast · The happiness and pain of product management | Noam Lovinsky (Grammarly, Facebook, YouTube, Thumbtack) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “There was me, and I was like, you know, I was sort of like 29 year old startup-y guy working with these guys who were awesome in YouTube in general and continues to be an incredible team. And so I think that was like a first really good lesson that in the right organizations, even in large organizations, advocate for like what's best for the team, advocate for what's best for the organization, even if that means that it puts you at a particular difficult moment. If it is a healthy team that rewards those sorts of decisions and actions, like good things will happen. If it's not good to know too, you know, and that's good to know early. So that's one thing that comes to mind. Maybe one other, I would say like atypical.”

    2024-03-17 · Lenny's Podcast · The happiness and pain of product management | Noam Lovinsky (Grammarly, Facebook, YouTube, Thumbtack) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “Into the existing product, and now you come and lead this focus area we're calling the creator focus area. So I went from basically rebuilding the product that our startup had built to leading one of the three focus areas at YouTube. There was the viewer team, the creator team, and the advertiser team and Hunter Walk, who's amazing, was leading the viewer team and Shashir Marotra, who's also very amazing, was leading the advertising team. What a wonderful thing.”

    2024-03-17 · Lenny's Podcast · The happiness and pain of product management | Noam Lovinsky (Grammarly, Facebook, YouTube, Thumbtack) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “And open about the priority, the relative priority of the thing that you're working on, even if, you know, it might lead to your project getting canceled. So one of the things that I remember doing really on is actually talking to the leadership team and being like, I don't think we should be putting 50 engineers on this project. Like looking at the rest of the roadmap and the rest of the priority or the rest of the priorities, I think this team would likely be better served elsewhere, even though that was likely negotiating my way out of a job in like month three. I don't know. I just kind of felt like that was the right thing for the team and for the business. And then that started a very interesting journey because, you know, from there, basically, you know, the leadership was like, you're right. We're going to wind that down and build some of those features.”

    2024-03-17 · Lenny's Podcast · The happiness and pain of product management | Noam Lovinsky (Grammarly, Facebook, YouTube, Thumbtack) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “Maybe first to start with kind of like why hop around these experiences. I always tell people I feel like I'm an icy trapped in a manager's body sometimes. like fundamentally i i like to build that's why i i do this i like to i like to make things and so sometimes the the more fun way to make things is to start something and sometimes the the better way to to make things in the situation that i'm in is to try to you know um support teams and lead through teams and so uh you know i joined youtube through through an acquisition of a company i started and um in in the in the beginning what i was doing there is just you know rebuilding that product um on on google on google infrastructure and for for youtube youtube customers and maybe the the first lesson was actually to look around at what the the rest of the team was doing and be really like on”

    2024-03-17 · Lenny's Podcast · The happiness and pain of product management | Noam Lovinsky (Grammarly, Facebook, YouTube, Thumbtack) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “Think everyone can chart their own path and has a way that is sort of authentic to them and leans on their strengths. What I often coach people is do what you like. You're generally going to be a lot better at the things that really fill you up, that really get you excited. And like life is short. There's like so many things to be doing out there. We're so lucky. Like the number of interesting waves of technology that I've experienced, it just makes me feel like it's going to keep happening for a long time. We're very fortunate to be born in the time that we are and have the opportunities that we are. So why, you know, spend your time doing something that doesn't feel good because you think that it might, you know, lead to some success where if you lean on what's authentic to you and what makes you happy, chances are you're going to be one of the best people at those things.”

    2024-03-17 · Lenny's Podcast · The happiness and pain of product management | Noam Lovinsky (Grammarly, Facebook, YouTube, Thumbtack) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “Better at that. I get to know people by doing work with them, by helping them. And it doesn't necessarily scale in the same way that Twitter does, but it's served me well so far and it's more kind of authentic. And it's what comes more natural to me. And so that's how I do it. So like I'm doing a lot of coffees. I'm like, you know, meeting people that way. I'm not doing a lot of tweeting or writing of newsletters, maybe one day, but that's not me today.”

    2024-03-17 · Lenny's Podcast · The happiness and pain of product management | Noam Lovinsky (Grammarly, Facebook, YouTube, Thumbtack) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “Yeah, yeah, that's funny. Yeah, you know, it's funny. I think about that a lot. Like, am I doing something wrong? Should I be putting more effort on that? I mean, it's funny that you mentioned newsletter. Like I spend a lot of time with the substat team, it's been a very active advisor there. The team is fantastic, by the way. And I think about it, am I doing something wrong in my curb by not doing that? But just, I mean, just to be honest, it's just not, doesn't come like authentically to me, it doesn't come naturally to me. I get really focused on the thing that I am working on and get really deep in the thing that I am working on. And I have a hard time kind of multitasking a lot outside of that, to be totally honest. And the way that I kind of get to know the industry and other teams and whatnot is just through working with people. I'm not like a very big networker. I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with that. I wish I were.”

    2024-03-17 · Lenny's Podcast · The happiness and pain of product management | Noam Lovinsky (Grammarly, Facebook, YouTube, Thumbtack) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “Thinking on a different time horizon if you're a large organization and you do some performance management process twice a year in year zero to one incubator, you've already killed it. It's the wrong incentive.”

    2024-03-17 · Lenny's Podcast · The happiness and pain of product management | Noam Lovinsky (Grammarly, Facebook, YouTube, Thumbtack) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “I remember in a board meeting, the new model really started show legs, and one of the board members, Brian Schreier at Sequoya, said it was the prettiest mile graph that he had ever seen.”

    2024-03-17 · Lenny's Podcast · The happiness and pain of product management | Noam Lovinsky (Grammarly, Facebook, YouTube, Thumbtack) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “There were many times where Google leadership reconsidered the acquisition, and should we like sell YouTube? If you can believe it or not.”

    2024-03-17 · Lenny's Podcast · The happiness and pain of product management | Noam Lovinsky (Grammarly, Facebook, YouTube, Thumbtack) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source