Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth - How Shopify builds a high-intensity culture | Farhan Thawar (VP and Head of Eng)
The conversation emphasizes the value of choosing challenging paths in career and business decisions, as they lead to greater learning and collaboration with smart individuals. This approach is exemplified by encouraging job seekers to build projects rather than just sending resumes. The discussion also highlights creating intensity in organizations by maximizing productivity within limited time, using strategies like pair programming and regular check-ins to maintain focus and velocity. Additionally, the importance of hiring practices that focus on real-world trials and internships is discussed, as they provide better insights into a candidate's fit and capabilities than traditional interviews.
Key Points:
- Choose challenging paths to learn and grow, even if they don't lead to immediate success.
- Create organizational intensity by maximizing productivity per hour, not just working longer hours.
- Use pair programming to enhance collaboration and problem-solving efficiency.
- Implement real-world trials and internships to assess candidates' fit and capabilities.
- Regular check-ins and feedback loops help maintain focus and alignment in teams.
Details:
1. 🚀 Embracing the Hard Path: Lessons in Career and Learning
1.1. Benefits of Choosing the Hard Path
1.2. Practical Learning Activities
2. 🏢 Building Intensity in Organizations: Strategies for Success
- Increase productivity by focusing on output per minute rather than extending work hours, ensuring efficiency and effectiveness.
- Implement a 'delete code club' to streamline processes, which can lead to the removal of over a million lines of unnecessary code, simplifying operations and reducing complexity.
- Encourage asking 'stupid' questions to foster a culture of curiosity and innovation, allowing team members to explore new ideas without fear of judgment.
- Gain diverse insights by collaborating with various successful leaders, leveraging their experiences to drive organizational growth and adaptability.
3. 🎙️ Insights from Furhan Thaur: Leadership and Innovation at Shopify
3.1. Remote Work and Operational Efficiency
3.2. Leadership Strategies and Simplification
3.3. Future Growth and Talent Development
4. 🔍 Key Themes: Hiring, Intensity, and Choosing Challenges
- Furhan Thaur's career is characterized by three key themes: hiring, creating organizational intensity, and choosing challenging paths.
- Hiring: Emphasizing the importance of building a strong team, Furhan has consistently focused on recruiting top talent to drive success.
- Creating Organizational Intensity: Furhan believes in fostering a high-energy environment that pushes teams to achieve ambitious goals.
- Choosing Challenging Paths: He often opts for difficult projects that offer significant growth opportunities, aligning with Steve Jobs' philosophy of connecting the dots looking backward.
5. 📊 Engineering Productivity: Tools and Metrics for Success
5.1. Challenges in Measuring Engineering Productivity
5.2. DX: A Comprehensive Solution for Productivity Measurement
6. 🛠️ Career Development: Embracing Challenges and Learning from Failure
6.1. Persona: Identity Verification and Fraud Prevention
6.2. Career Advice: Choosing the Hard Path
7. 💡 The Power of Failure: Learning and Growth
- Choosing the hard path, even if it doesn't lead to immediate success, results in valuable learning experiences and opportunities to work with smart people.
- Sending out 10 resumes a day is an easy task that doesn't necessarily lead to learning, whereas building a project like a Shopify app can provide practical skills and portfolio pieces.
- Taking harder courses may result in lower grades but offers the chance to meet and learn from smarter peers, which can be more beneficial in the long run.
- The speaker emphasizes the importance of learning from people and choosing challenging environments to foster growth.
- While choosing the hard path is beneficial, it's important to avoid doing things in a 'dumb way' just because they are difficult. The focus should be on learning and growth.
8. 🤔 The Art of Asking Questions: A Superpower in Disguise
- Embracing the ability to look 'stupid' in public is considered a superpower, as it encourages experimentation and learning from failures.
- Trying unconventional methods, even if they fail, can lead to discovering more efficient processes, such as reducing washing time by 40 minutes with a new machine setting.
- Implementing guardrails is crucial when experimenting to prevent potential disasters, like taking down a major service.
- Encouraging team members to ask 'dumb' questions can reveal common uncertainties and foster a culture of openness and learning.
- Building resilience to rejection and failure can be developed through experiences like retail work or cold calling, which involve frequent negative responses.
- The mindset of not fearing to look dumb allows for continuous learning and adaptation, even in high-stakes environments.
9. 💼 Career Frameworks and Insights: Building a Successful Path
- Understanding personal strengths and weaknesses is crucial for career success. Aligning with individuals who complement these strengths, such as visionary leaders, can enhance long-term progress.
- Partnering with 'unreasonable' individuals who have a clear vision for the future is valuable. Recognizing one's limitations and collaborating with visionaries can drive success.
- Developing a personal career framework is essential for making informed career decisions. This framework should align with personal values and goals, helping to avoid distractions from superficial job attributes like title and salary.
- An example of using a career framework involves sending it to a recruiter to guide decision-making and prevent distractions. Reviewing this framework annually ensures alignment with personal values.
- Commitment to a career framework is demonstrated by the willingness to resign from positions that violate it, even without another job lined up. This underscores the importance of understanding and adhering to personal work preferences.