An inside look at how the New York Times builds product | Alex Hardiman (CPO, the New York Times)

1. 0:00 – 7:37

   Alex’s background

   1. AHAlex Hardiman0:00

      One thing that's really interesting is that our impact and, like, our business goals are in service of our mission, which is to seek the truth and kind of help people understand the world, not the other way around. And so what it means is that the way that we, you know, think about impact is (laughs) growing a giant subscription business, that business exists to strengthen and inform democracy at a time when people are struggling to understand basic facts and struggling to understand each other. And that means that, you know, impact for us is growing subscribers, but it's also when a deeply in- you know, reported story triggers an important policy change or a new law. And so when you're a product manager, you're involved, again, in, like, driving specific metrics, like engagement or subscribers, but you're also trying to help stories find their real audience in ways that trigger just this whole different side of- of mission and purpose-driven impact, and I didn't feel that when I was at a place like Facebook. (instrumental music)

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky1:00

      Welcome to Lenny's Podcast. I'm Lenny, and my goal here is to help you get better at the craft of building and growing products. Today, my guest is Alex Hardeman. Alex is chief product officer at The New York Times, where she leads teams that build the company's news, cooking, games, audio, and advertising products. Prior to this role, she was chief product officer at The Atlantic, and before that, she spent two years at Facebook, where she led their news product amongst other things. As you'll hear in our conversation, Alex has been at the center of the storm so many times, including at Facebook right after the 2016 election, then at The New York Times right as COVID hit. She shares so many stories and insights about how The New York Times builds products, what it's like for product teams to work with journalists, what's good and bad about working at a company like The New York Times versus a FAANG tech type company, and also how they went about acquiring and integrating Wordle. I had such a blast doing this interview, and I hope that you enjoy it as much as I did. With that, I bring you Alex Hardeman. Today's episode is brought to you by Miro. Creating a product, especially one that your users can't live without, is damn hard. But it's made easier by working closely with your colleagues to capture ideas, get feedback, and being able to iterate quickly. That's where Miro comes in. Miro is an online visual whiteboard that's designed specifically for teams like yours. I actually used Miro to come up with a plan for this very ad. With Miro, you can build out your product strategy by brainstorming with sticky notes, comments, live reactions, voting tools, even a timer to keep your team on track. You can also bring your whole distributed team together around wireframes, where anyone can draw their own ideas with the pen tool or put their own images or mockups right into the Miro board. And with one of Miro's ready-made templates, you can go from discovery and research to product roadmaps to customer journey flows to final mocks. Want to see how I use Miro? Head on over to my Miro board at miro.com/lenny to see my most popular podcast episodes, my favorite Miro templates. You can also leave feedback on this podcast episode and more. That's miro.com/lenny. This episode is brought to you by Athletic Greens. I've been hearing about AG1 on basically every podcast that I listen to, like Tim Ferriss and Lex Fridman, and so I finally gave it a shot earlier this year, and it has quickly become a core part of my morning routine, especially on days that I need to go deep on writing or record a podcast like this. Here's three things that I love about AG1. One, with a small scoop that dissolved in water, you're absorbing 75 vitamins, minerals, probiotics, and adaptogens. I kind of like to think of it as a little safety net for my nutrition in case I've missed something in my diet. Two, they treat AG1 like a software product. Apparently, they're on their 52nd iteration, and they're constantly evolving it based on the latest science, research studies, and internal testing that they do. And three, it's just one easy thing that I can do every single day to take care of myself. Right now, it's time to reclaim your health and arm your immune system with convenient daily nutrition. It's just one scoop in a cup of water every day, and that's it. There's no need for a million different pills and supplements to look out for your health. Make it easy, Athletic Greens is gonna give you a free one-year supply of immune-supporting vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first purchase. All you have to do is visit athleticgreens.com/lenny. Again, that's athleticgreens.com/lenny. Take ownership over your health and pick up the ultimate daily nutritional insurance. (instrumental music) Alex, thank you for being here. Welcome to the podcast.

   3. AHAlex Hardiman4:53

      Thanks so much, Lenny. It's really awesome to be here with you.

   4. LRLenny Rachitsky4:56

      What's interesting is I think you may be the first product leader on this podcast who doesn't work at a big tech FAANG sort of startup, and so I'm really excited to just kind of dig in to see what it's like to build product at a company like The New York Times.

   5. AHAlex Hardiman5:09

      Thank you. No, no, that sounds- that sounds awesome. Let's- let's dive right in.

   6. LRLenny Rachitsky5:12

      Okay. Bef- before we dive in-

   7. AHAlex Hardiman5:14

      Yeah.

   8. LRLenny Rachitsky5:14

      ... I'd love to get a little bit of background on just your career. And I'm curious just, like, how- what was your career path to becoming the chief product officer at The New York Times?

   9. AHAlex Hardiman5:24

      Thanks for asking. I mean, I, um, I've definitely spent most of my career, like, right at the intersection of journalism and tech. And I think in hindsight, if you were to ask my family, they probably wouldn't be that surprised, even though, you know, for me, I was just kind of- kind of rolling with it and sort of following what- what felt like a really interesting set of problems to solve. But when I just look at my family, um, there is a ton of journalism kind of in our- in our DNA. My grandfather was a news anchor on the West Coast, and I- I really revered him. And my great-grandmother, she was pretty amazing. She actually started one of the first TV stations in the Midwest back in the '50s when it was still, you know, kind of, like, pioneering territory. And so for me, one of my first... Like, the dream for me was to try to find a way to kind of build things in the news space, and that's how I first ended up at The New York Times. And I've- I've had two stints at The New York Times. My first stint was for a decade from 2006 to 2016.And it was during a really interesting time of, of pretty big transformation. There's so much to talk about within that decade, but I would say there are, like, two really big things that happened in that moment. The first was really trying to work with the company to shift from being a print-first product into a mobile-first product. And if you go back to 2006 and you think about it, um, I mean, the Times had no mobile presence whatsoever. And even, like, the iPhone 2G and the App Store didn't come out, I think, until, like, 2008. (laughs) So we just really started investing in small mobile use cases, first on the margins and then more and more aggressively, until we were just leading with mobile in everything that we did. New journalism formats, new product features, new revenue opportunities, that type of thing. And then the second big thing that, um, kind of marked my, just my journey at the New York Times was the sh- shift to a direct-to-consumer subscription model. This was back in 2011, and there was just a lot of skepticism, including from people at the New York Times, about whether or not people would pay for quality journalism. And we brought in consultants and they said, you know, "Maybe over the course of history you'll get to one million subscribers if you're lucky." (laughs) And so it felt like a really, like, big nervous bet at the n- at the time, but thank goodness we kind of helped make a market for, for paid journalism that is... has really helped a lot of news organizations, you know, find new ways to, to support quality

2. 7:37 – 11:11

   How Alex fought disinformation on the news team at Facebook

   1. AHAlex Hardiman7:37

      coverage. But after a decade, I, I did what I think a lot of people did, was you sort of look around and you say, like, "I love what I do, but I would love to go learn how to do product in the context of a product-led digital-first company." And so that's when I went to Facebook, and I left in 2016. And the timing is actually pretty important in terms of my experience at Facebook, because when I first joined Facebook, I totally left the media space and I was focused on building out a team that was really trying to help micro-sellers in markets like India and other parts of APAC who were coming online for the first time in really low-bandwidth areas, and just wanted to sell their goods through social commerce. Really looking at what WhatsApp and LINE and sort of other, other regional competitors were doing. And we were focused on business messaging and the interoperability of the Facebook apps from more of a small business perspective, and it was really awesome work. And then the 2016 presidential election happened. I'd only been there for a couple of months and, as has been discussed very widely and reported widely, I mean, it was a wild time where there was just so much reckoning around misinformation, disinformation, election integrity, platform responsibility. So I went over very quickly to help out on the news front, where I led the product and engineering teams, and it was really hard. Really interesting work. Did that for a couple of years, decided-

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky8:59

      Before, before we move on-

   3. AHAlex Hardiman9:00

      Yeah, yeah.

   4. LRLenny Rachitsky9:00

      ... I, I'm curious. Okay, wait-

   5. AHAlex Hardiman9:01

      Yeah.

   6. LRLenny Rachitsky9:01

      ... you were leading the news product at Facebook during the election? During, during the-

   7. AHAlex Hardiman9:05

      Right after the election.

   8. LRLenny Rachitsky9:06

      Right after the election, after everyone was coming after Facebook-

   9. AHAlex Hardiman9:09

      Yeah.

   10. LRLenny Rachitsky9:09

       ... trying to tear it down?

   11. AHAlex Hardiman9:10

       Yeah.

   12. LRLenny Rachitsky9:10

       Wow. What, what year was that?

   13. AHAlex Hardiman9:12

       Um, so it was... I joined in early 2017 on that effort.

   14. LRLenny Rachitsky9:16

       Yeah, wow.

   15. AHAlex Hardiman9:17

       And, you know, the election was, was November 2016.

   16. LRLenny Rachitsky9:20

       Oh my God. Uh, before you move on-

   17. AHAlex Hardiman9:21

       Yeah.

   18. LRLenny Rachitsky9:21

       ... just, like, what was... (laughs) What was that like? I don't know how one can describe that experience, but what do you think about when you think back to that time?

   19. AHAlex Hardiman9:29

       Uh, I think about wartime product management, right? (laughs) I mean, you're kind of coming in, um... And, and I think there was... Wh- what I appreciated about the time inside of Facebook was that there was just this incredible humility, right? That was needed to really understand and first, first diagnose, like, what was actually happening on the platform. And the approach to content on Facebook historically was very binary. You basically had content from friends and family, and then you had public content. And public content could come from anywhere. It could come from a, you know, reputable news organization, or it could come from, you know, my younger brother (laughs) posting something and declaring it to be, to be true. And what we really tried to do, kind of very quickly, was try to unpack the categories of public content to say that there actually is something that is factually accurate information (laughs) , and that requires a certain craft from the journalistic trade. And there are ways to kind of really look at what is trusted information, how you kind of make that a little bit more essential and visible to people on the platform, while then reducing things that are, at best dubious or, at worst, like, truly misleading propaganda. It was really fascinating and really hard just because the platform hadn't been built to think about classification of coverage in that way, let alone to have the right goals and kind of responsibilities and incentives. And so there was, there was just a ton of work to figure out how to make the platform far safer and far more informative after, I would say, a pretty, a pretty intense election cycle.

   20. LRLenny Rachitsky10:58

       Yeah. I feel like you're... I was gonna ask you about this later, but I feel like you're drawn towards just crazy... wild and crazy center of the storm roles, uh... I guess that one you didn't expect (laughs) necessarily to become

3. 11:11 – 14:13

   How some product people thrive in chaos

   1. LRLenny Rachitsky11:11

      that. I imagine the New York Times has a lot of that, but maybe, maybe a quick question there. What have you learned about just living in a world of just constant chaos and, and stress and urgency? Endless urgency?

   2. AHAlex Hardiman11:21

      I would say if you did ask my, my family and my husband, he would say that I'm always attracted to kind of the, the more chaotic, uh, problems. I, I just actually think that that's where product people thrive. Like, the idea of being able to take all of these crazy inputs, trying to like create a very structured model, right? To figure out, okay, like, what is true? Where do we have conviction? Where do we have open questions? What are the most important problems to solve? How do you prioritize? How do you get a team rallied around shared context in one single goal? Like, this is... Uh, these are actually the conditions where product managers, I think, thrive. And for me, just having been in the journalism space for, you know, about two decades now, it's just been... Or the tech space around news, it's just been a constant set of like upheaval and transformation. Some things within our control, some things entirely outside of our control, and so I love it. I mean, there's no better for me. Like, there's nothing else I'd rather be doing than trying to solve these problems in the world at scale. But it does, you know, it does take a certain amount of just like grit and resilience and-... you know, the ability to really focus on the most important problems in a given moment, and also the ability to kind of let other things slide when you have to.

   3. LRLenny Rachitsky12:33

      Yeah.

   4. AHAlex Hardiman12:33

      But again, it's, it's, I feel like these are core product skills that we look for in terms of leadership and grit, and the ability to drive through really, really tough problems that there's no playbook for, nobody's ever (laughs) really done before.

   5. LRLenny Rachitsky12:44

      Yeah. You said, you said PMs thrive in this. I, I think some do. Some are like, "No. Leave me, leave me out of that." (laughs)

   6. AHAlex Hardiman12:49

      (laughs) I guess that's true.

   7. LRLenny Rachitsky12:50

      I, uh, there's a, there's a metaphor I like to use when I give PMs advice on where to work within a company, which is there's, like, the Eye of Sauron, which is th- the number one most important thing to the CEO at that time, and my advice is often don't. Avoid that thing, usually, but work maybe to the side of that 'cause you don't wanna work on something that doesn't matter, that's, like, over in the Shire land. You wanna be something that matters, but not may being th- the most important thing. I feel like you're the opposite. You're like, "Where's the Eye of Sauron focused? I'm gonna (laughs) go there and, and build stuff." That's pretty awesome.

   8. AHAlex Hardiman13:21

      Uh, awesome sometimes.

   9. LRLenny Rachitsky13:22

      (laughs)

   10. AHAlex Hardiman13:22

       I'm sure there are moments too (laughs) where it would be nice to, to, to chill. But I, I am, I am drawn to, to those types of problems, for sure. This feels like therapy, Lenny. I've kind of been doing it. (laughs)

   11. LRLenny Rachitsky13:32

       Let's... Tell me about your mother. (laughs)

   12. AHAlex Hardiman13:35

       She's wonderful. (laughs)

   13. LRLenny Rachitsky13:36

       Okay, great. (laughs) That's, that's the end of that one. I'll let you finish your, uh, your career overview, and then I'll...

   14. AHAlex Hardiman13:42

       Well, that's... I mean, I feel like, eh, you, we kind of just, um, you know, it... We're almost kind of at present, which is I, um, found that there was so much incredible experience that I was able to kind of soak up and lean at a place like Facebook. And, for me, I really wanted to figure out how to apply that back into organizations that just had more of a, a kind of classic journalistic mission and purpose. So, I went to The Atlantic for a year. They had just been purchased by the Emerson Collective, so it was a really kind of fun moment of just investment, and expansion, and ambition. Relaunched

4. 14:13 – 16:22

   Alex’s return to the New York Times

   1. AHAlex Hardiman14:13

      their consumer business, and then I came back to The New York Times in late 2019, right before the pandemic, and I've been there ever since.

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky14:19

      No way. Just, your timing is impeccable every time.

   3. AHAlex Hardiman14:22

      It really is. (laughs)

   4. LRLenny Rachitsky14:24

      I, uh, I was doing some research on you before this chat, and when you came back to The New York Times, there's all these stories about how, how big of a deal it was. Uh, returns to The New York Times. That must've been something, coming back, 'cause you were there for 10 years, right, initially, and then you came back. What was that experience like, just coming back to something like that after being away?

   5. AHAlex Hardiman14:43

      I felt really lucky. I mean, when I left on The New York Time... Eh, for when I left The New York Times back in 2016, it was on really, really good terms. Like, it almost felt... I was like, "I'm going on an externship, and I really hope that one day I'll be able to, I'll be able to come back and just do my job better." Because I do, I do think there's real value in being able to do product in a bunch of different contexts. You're just so much better at pattern recognition, like, learning how to solve a diversity of problems, learning to work through things. So, I, um, I had a lot of great support when I left, which was really important, and I don't think everyone necessarily has the privilege of that support when they exit a company. So, when I came back, it was just a real moment of excitement. And my interview process, I kind of joke with, you know, my boss at the time, but it did actually feel more like therapy, where you, you... When you've worked with people for a decade before and you go in, the conversation isn't, you know, the normal list of, of interview questions. It's like, "Okay. Here's what type of leader you were, you know, a couple of years ago. Here, here are the conditions on the ground now. How do you feel about X? How do you feel about Y?" You know, "Do you st- Are you still passionate about solving this? What else have you learned that's gonna make you better?" Like, it was, it was wonderful. It was, like, one of the best interview processes because you're talking to a bunch of people who knew what you were like when you were leading as a person at a different point in your career, and they're kind of pushing you to be better. And so, I felt like I got kind of the, the best chance of a lifetime to come back and try to do my job better than I had been able to do it before, and that's, um, that's pretty cool.

   6. LRLenny Rachitsky16:13

      And you've been there three years at this point?

   7. AHAlex Hardiman16:14

      Yeah. Three years on Halloween, so coming up very soon.

   8. LRLenny Rachitsky16:18

      Oh, wow.

   9. AHAlex Hardiman16:19

      Yeah.

   10. LRLenny Rachitsky16:19

       That's three days from now when we're recording.

   11. AHAlex Hardiman16:21

       Yeah.

   12. LRLenny Rachitsky16:21

       I wonder when this comes

5. 16:22 – 20:42

   What product means at the New York Times

   1. LRLenny Rachitsky16:22

      out. I'm curious, at a company like The New York Times, which is... I imagine people think, when they think product, they think it's the newspaper, and at, and at Airbnb we have this challenge where, like, when we talk to hosts, "Here's the product team." They're like, "What, what is, what is your product? Is it in our homes?" And you have to kind of help people understand, "Okay. When we talk product, we mean the website and app." What do you think of the product at The New York Times, and then is it a challenge to help people understand, "Here's what the product team does?"

   2. AHAlex Hardiman16:47

      I, it, it's a really good question. I mean, at the most basic level, I would say that our product is our journalism, which we then marry with a really compelling and useful user experience, in a way that helps people really act on our journalism so that they can understand and engage with the world around them. And, you know, for about 150 years, our product was pretty simple. It was a printed newspaper, which is still very beloved today. But the UX of the newspaper was... I mean, it was a predictable structure. It was a very finite amount of news, so it was time-bound, which I think is kind of a, a really kind of lovely thing in terms of setting expectation. It also has, like, the packaging of the newspaper, just such serendipity where you can move across news, opinion, culture, games. And so it's, it's a really kind of great bounded product in and of itself. But about 25 years ago, you know, when we started shifting over to digital, the web, and mobile, the world just fully opened up in a way, and we just saw this really tremendous disaggregation and kind of distribution of our journalism. And so we really tried to meet the moment by building a wide array of products in the news space to extend our reach. So, our products then, our digital products for our website, our apps, newsletters. We dabbled with a lot in the VR/AR space early on. Um, and so that, that was kind of, I would say, like, the, the first big extension of our products. When we then pivoted, though, to a subscription model, it was a really interesting moment where we actually had to take more of a destination-first approach, and it was almost like the beginning of us rebundling all of what we did, but on our own destination again, a digital destination. Because in order to build a really thriving subscription business...... you really need a direct relationship with your customer, as opposed to just relying on platforms to really kinda distribute your, your coverage. And so that's where we, again, we really started re-bundling the breadth and depth of value that people once kind of found in a Sunday newspaper at digital scale. And now today, our product bundle includes even so much more than news, which I hope we'll talk about a little bit more later. We've really kind of scaled our products in a bunch of different categories where we feel like we can really help people, you know, understand and engage with the world. So we have cooking, we have games, we have sports, we have Wirecutter, right, which is how... you know, a great-

   3. LRLenny Rachitsky19:05

      I love Wirecutter.

   4. AHAlex Hardiman19:05

      ... recommendation service. We're playing with a new audio app all around audio journalism. And so those, those are actually... Like, we have, you know, now like six fully fledged different product destinations, and the next thing for us to do is to really figure out how to put those together into a bundle that really becomes the essential subscription for any curious English-speaking person around the world who, you know, really wants to know what's happening and wants to be able to, again, act and engage and make great decisions based on, based on the products that we build.

   5. LRLenny Rachitsky19:36

      Got it. So, so it sounds like the strategy is a subscription bundle where you just keep bundling awesome stuff into this bundle so it's an obvious thing everyone has, whether you want cooking or games or, or The New York Times online.

   6. AHAlex Hardiman19:49

      I think that's right. We did this pretty great exercise and, and kinda strategy, strategy project over the last year where we, we kinda took a look and we said, "You know, what is the largest addressable m- market where The New York Times can be truly valuable every single day to a group of people?" And what we found was that there are about 135 million people around the world who we believe are willing to pay for the type of high-quality journalism-based products that The New York Times produces in the categories of news, gameplay, cooking and recipes, sports, which is why we acquired The Athletic, shopping recommendations, and audio. And so in order for us to, like, really capture as much of that audience and, like, really serve them well, there are really three things that we need to do to make that essential subscription work. The first is we absolutely need to have the best news destination in the world.

6. 20:42 – 26:20

   How the product team at the New York Times is structured

   1. AHAlex Hardiman20:42

      And when you think about The New York Times, we actually have this solar system metaphor where, for us, news is the sun in the sense that it's why we exist, it is what gives us kind of our brand heritage and reputation, it's what instills trust. It's also where we just have the largest audience when you think about a funnel kind of for our portfolio, and it's also where we just have the most amount of high-quality coverage. But then that sun kind of helps you give birth to other satellite planets or products that have a lot of the same DNA again, like great, trusted journalism; great journalists who just have, like, real expertise; a great product experience that allows you to really, like, unlock that value; distribution; reach; sort of oth- uh, the other ingredients that you would need for successful products to work. And so we're really focused on, you know, building out beyond-news products that really help people engage with their passions and kind of life needs that go beyond news. And then the third thing is what you're describing as the bundle: how do we create a connected family of products that puts all of those things together so that, wherever you come into The New York Times, to news or maybe through Wordle, you know that you're having the best experience within that category, but then you also can quickly experience and discover everything else that we offer? And that's the strategy and the vision, and it's a, it's a really... we, I mean, it's a huge ambition. We wanna get to 15 million subscribers by 2027. We're at just over nine million today, and I really think we can do it.

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky22:07

      Awesome. I actually wanted to chat about goals and how you think about success as a product team. I imagine your star metric is what you just said, which is subscribers. And if that's true, what other goals do you have across teams? And, and maybe even further, and I'm packing a lot of questions into one question, but I'm curious just, like, how your product team looks. Like, how many PMs do you have? Roughly how do you structure the teams, and then roughly what kind of goals do they all have? Just trying to imagine the product team at, at The New York Times.

   3. AHAlex Hardiman22:35

      Let's start with structure. So first, I just, I love this question talking about my team because I love hyping them, they're amazing, and our success is truly, like, only as good as our people. And-

   4. LRLenny Rachitsky22:46

      Good to hear.

   5. AHAlex Hardiman22:47

      ... the... Yeah. It's, it's, it is, it is so true. And so for us, when we think about our org structure, the way to set that up so that our people can really do their best work is that we have two axes: we have functions and then we have missions. And so I oversee two functions, which is the functions of product and design. And the functions themselves are it's pretty... uh, it's kind of normal of what you would find in terms of functional responsibilities. We focus on standards of craft and excellence; career growth, like career frameworks; equitable promotion processes; community of practices; skill development; all of that. But missions is kind of where a lot of the work happens, so these are cross-functional teams very similar to what we had at a place like Facebook. And these cross-functional teams are led by usually a general manager, a product leader, or an engineering leader, and they're all pursuing the same high-level goals and objectives. And cross-functional missions at the Times, they can include a lot of the same skillsets that you would find at a tech company: PMs, engineers, designers, data scientists, researchers, product marketers. But the big difference is we also have editors if it's-

   6. LRLenny Rachitsky23:55

      Mm-hmm.

   7. AHAlex Hardiman23:55

      ... a product space that directly shapes our journalism. And I, I can talk more about that because it's, um, it's a pretty interesting differentiating factor.

   8. LRLenny Rachitsky24:02

      Yeah, that's super interesting. So there's a journalist within cross-functional product teams?

   9. AHAlex Hardiman24:06

      Exactly. And so-

   10. LRLenny Rachitsky24:07

       Wow.

   11. AHAlex Hardiman24:07

       But we have three different types of missions, and so we have consumer missions, we have monetization missions, and we have platform missions. So editors are embedded within consumer missions, and that's, those are the missions that I oversee, where we're focused on creating really great products, again, in categories like news, cooking, you know, games, audio, et cetera. And so that is where having editors involved, particularly, like, editors who are very product-minded, it kind of brings in the best of their expertise and marries it with, you know, a lot of the normal signal that you look for in terms of data, research, and other insights when you're trying to make sure that you...... understand a consumer problem, and that you're really finding the best creative solution for it.

   12. LRLenny Rachitsky24:47

       Hmm. Cool.

   13. AHAlex Hardiman24:48

       Um, it is, it is really cool. It's what it's one of the, I think, most gratifying parts of, of working at a news organization like The Times. But if you have, if you work on a different mission, like a monetization mission, we have two really big ones. One is subscriber growth. The other one that's also really important is digital advertising. And so they really, they build centralized commercial products that we can then scale across all of the products in our bundle. So the subscriber growth team, for instance, they look at making sure that we have, you know, really great account ID management for subscribers if you're buying a subscription through games or through news. Or if you're on the digital advertising team, you know, you're trying to make sure that we have a first party data program that's really privacy safe that works as well in cooking as it does, you know, in the news space. And then there's a totally th- a totally different third bucket of, of mission that we have, which is all of our platform teams. And so this is everything from, you know, monetization platforms like our commerce engine, which is so important, right, because we're a subscription business, to data platforms where you might have like our ML platform or experimentation tooling, to just basic kind of infrastructure. And those are shared across the bundle which just really helps make it so much easier and more efficient for really engineers to, to ship code and do their best work. So a lot of this actually I think probably is pretty familiar to how you might organize at a, at a tech company, minus the editors.

   14. LRLenny Rachitsky26:15

       Awesome. On that info piece, that reminds me of something I definitely wanted to talk about...

   15. AHAlex Hardiman26:19

       Yeah.

   16. LRLenny Rachitsky26:19

       ... which is

7. 26:20 – 33:15

   How the New York Times makes stories come alive with balanced creative and technical teams

   1. LRLenny Rachitsky26:20

      something New York Times is really known for is the visualizations and these kind of immersive stories that you all put out. And I'm so curious just how that gets done. I feel like if I was at a, on a product team at a regular, like a big tech FANG company, it'd be like, "Shit, all these ad hoc things I gotta do for all these stories, such a pain in the butt." That's so important to The New York Times and the online experience. So I'm curious just, like, what is it like to build these things, say, the election, you know, widgets and all that stuff, and then... And I was just reading a story about the, about climate change, and it's this, like, really beautiful, immersive story of just what is happening with the world. So there's, like, a bunch of questions there but I guess roughly just how does that, how does that get done? Something like that.

   2. AHAlex Hardiman27:02

      Well, first, thanks for saying that. I really appreciate it. I do think there, there's something really special about some of the ways that we marry kind of the journalism and the presentation. I want to start just by giving credit where credit's due, which is, I think some of the most interesting and inventive and compelling formats, they actually do start off as one-off experiments that are spun up in the newsroom by embedded teams that we have within graphics, visual journalism, interactive news teams. So this is where we have editors, journalists, engineers, data scientists, designers, literally, like, all hunkered down together focusing on how to make one story come to life in the best possible way.

   3. LRLenny Rachitsky27:38

      Who has the idea usually? Is it, like, the, the journalist working on it? They're like, "Hey, I think we should make something really great."

   4. AHAlex Hardiman27:43

      Exactly, yeah. I mean, the, one of the, the things that's... I mean, we have a newsroom of over 2,000 people, and so you basically have people who've been, you know, experts on certain beats, like climate, for instance, for decades, and so they're the ones who... They have kind of the nugget of the idea. They start to do reporting, and then they, you know, really pull in others, like, from visuals, from interactives to say, like, "How can I really make sure that I can tell this story with as much impact and weight as possible?" And that's where the magic starts to happen, when you kind of pull in all of those other skill sets together to help dream up how that story might be told.

   5. LRLenny Rachitsky28:19

      So are they like, "Alex, we need one of these for our story. Can you get us on the, on the ro- on the list?" Like, how does, how does that process work?

   6. AHAlex Hardiman28:26

      No, no. No, so these are teams that are really autonomous in the newsroom.

   7. LRLenny Rachitsky28:30

      Mm-hmm.

   8. AHAlex Hardiman28:30

      So for, for one-off, truly special features... Like, I'll give you an example of one that-

   9. LRLenny Rachitsky28:34

      Yeah.

   10. AHAlex Hardiman28:34

       ... I found to be particularly powerful. I don't know if you read Jodi Kantor, who is one of our, our... A really incredible investigative reporter who you might know for some of her work that she did around MeToo and Harvey Weinstein and that investigation.

   11. LRLenny Rachitsky28:47

       Mm. Yeah.

   12. AHAlex Hardiman28:48

       She recently did a piece on how employers are tracking and monitoring remote workers with tools like productivity scores. And the story itself was designed to show a person's own productivity score in the moment as they read the article.

   13. LRLenny Rachitsky29:02

       Oh, shit.

   14. AHAlex Hardiman29:02

       And it was super visceral, really creepy in the most effective way. And that's, like, in my mind, like, that's the type of magical experience that only happens when you actually have dedicated designers, engineers, and others who can, like, really sit down with a reporter to say, like, "Let's figure out how to shape that story in the most magical way." And the speed of news is so fast that you don't have time to mess with roadmaps. A- and so we really have teams who are kind of freed up from some of the normal processes around that, so they can really just focus on, on storytelling for really big stories and pieces. But on top of that, what we do have is a storytelling product team. And what they do is they really kind of take notice of things that are starting to work in more of the experimental phase, some of these one-offs. And then they work closely with editors to test and find product market fit for new formats that can actually scale across many parts of the report, so that over time, you know, when you open the app, the app is more accessible, more engaging because we still have the traditional story-based article but we're also shifting more of the distribution stories into video, into visuals, into live. I mean, if you even look at live, we've kind of broken out of the tyranny of the article in many ways where you have live reporter updates that are the size of, length of tweets, right? People filing from the ground, you know, in Ukraine, trying to give you a sense of what's happening in a very immediate and real way. And that's where we do have teams, product teams, who have to think in two modes. First, they have to be able to think in the moment with editors, where you might not always have all the right data at your fingertips and you just have to make a call. Like, what is the best experience to tell this story in a really truthful, accurate, accessible way?... and then the other mode is when they're not shipping at the speed of news, they're trying to build end-to-end systems so that we're building the tooling to actually create the stories at the same time as the consumer experience, which is a totally different mode of system-level thinking. And it's a, it's a very cool space. That product team is, is... They're pulling off some pretty incredible work because they can operate in those two modes. It's like in the moment, in the moment of the story, but also trying to build the systems that allow you to kind of reshape the composition of storytelling formats that we have across our products over time.

   15. LRLenny Rachitsky31:23

       That is super cool. What percentage of these m- fancy stories are using the platform and building on something that already exists, versus, like, a one-off experiment would you say, roughly?

   16. AHAlex Hardiman31:33

       The majority are on our platforms.

   17. LRLenny Rachitsky31:35

       Mm-hmm.

   18. AHAlex Hardiman31:35

       Um, hands down, yeah, yeah.

   19. LRLenny Rachitsky31:36

       Okay, that makes sense. And then, just so I understand, so you said Jodi was the, uh, journalist-

   20. AHAlex Hardiman31:42

       Yeah.

   21. LRLenny Rachitsky31:42

       ... that you mentioned? So does... She has, like, a product team dedicated to her work?

   22. AHAlex Hardiman31:46

       No.

   23. LRLenny Rachitsky31:47

       Okay.

   24. AHAlex Hardiman31:47

       What we have is we have a centralized interactive news team, graphics team, data journalism team. And so they... Those editors partner with different journalists when they have really big stories to kind of help, help bring their story to life.

   25. LRLenny Rachitsky32:01

       I see. So do they have to come to this team and be like, "Hey, I'd love your time." Like, how does that prioritization... Because I imagine a lot of journalists are coming to them like, "Hey, you know, my story is gonna be awesome. We need you."

   26. AHAlex Hardiman32:12

       You know what? To be totally honest, I'm not involved.

   27. LRLenny Rachitsky32:15

       Mm-hmm.

   28. AHAlex Hardiman32:16

       Um, so somehow it works. It just does. (laughs)

   29. LRLenny Rachitsky32:19

       Okay. That's, that's a great leadership, uh, sign. Like, it just works, you know, you set it up, and it's working, so that's great.

   30. AHAlex Hardiman32:25

       Well, and the newsroom has set it up-
8. 33:15 – 42:00

   The acquisition of Wordle

   1. AHAlex Hardiman33:15

      ...

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky33:15

      Okay, so you mentioned Wordle, and y'all acquired Wordle recently, and I'm just curious what that was all like. I imagine it's still being integrated. Were you involved in the, the exploration and purchase process, and what was... What went on there?

   3. AHAlex Hardiman33:29

      Wordle has been such a fun ride. So maybe I'll first just kind of bring you behind the scenes on how the-

   4. LRLenny Rachitsky33:34

      Yeah.

   5. AHAlex Hardiman33:34

      ... deal came to be, and then we can talk a little bit more about what the integration process has been like.

   6. LRLenny Rachitsky33:39

      Yeah, that sounds great.

   7. AHAlex Hardiman33:39

      Um, so I first heard about Wordle in early January because a New York Times reporter, Daniel Victor, actually wrote a piece about Josh Wardle, who's a software engineer in Brooklyn, and how he had created the game, really as, like, this, this gesture of love for his partner. And I certainly wasn't the only person to read, (laughs) read that column. Like, everyone inside The New York Times perked up. And I remember reaching out to Jonathan Knight, who's the general manager of games, he's on my team. He'd already taken notice well before the piece was, was published, and he had already reached out to Josh to see if he would be interested in having games join our portfolio. And we just all loved Wordle immediately, because if you've played it, you know, it shares a lot of the DNA of other really successful word games that we have at The New York Times, like Spelling Bee or the Crossword Mini. And if anything, Josh was really, you know, forthright that he created it because he was inspired by, by those games. And then in the context of just our subscription strategy games, it's such an important category for us. Um, we really see games and demand for games as this... Basically, like, uh, it's like a counterpoint to the news. It gives people a chance to actually take a break. It's fun. It doesn't feel like empty calories. It's really time well-spent. And we were just thinking of Wordle as such a, like, wonderful addition to our games franchise, to really give people, you know, more reasons to feel like they had a relationship with The New York Times every day. So the, the whole thesis of the acquisition just made so much sense, and our team just very quickly engaged with Josh, and the acquisition talks were incredibly fast. I mean, the whole thing, uh, took place in a matter of weeks, which is way faster than any other acquisition I've been a part of. It was a very amicable process, and we were just super delighted to bring Wordle on board, but it, it happened in, like, record speed.

   8. LRLenny Rachitsky35:27

      Wow, yeah. It felt fast from the outside too, that, like, it became a huge deal, and then, okay, New York Times buys him. That's, uh... Yeah, it's impressive. You said you acquired The Athletic. How often are you acquiring companies?

   9. AHAlex Hardiman35:38

      We also acquired The Athletic, um, and that was back in... Around the same time. I, I think for now, we feel like we actually... We, we have all of the major categories to make the Essential subscription work. For us to get to 15 million subscribers, we really feel like news, sports, games, cooking, audio, and shopping, like, those, those are the categories, and we just have to make them the best possible versions of themselves, those products, so that we can really provide just tremendous value every day to people. So that doesn't mean that we won't make some other acquisitions. If anyone has the be- the next Wordle, would absolutely love to hear about it. But I do think there's also, you know, a real lesson for a lot of companies, not only about when you acquire, like, what's the opportunity? But also, are you ready to actually integrate an acquisition? And we learned a lot just around Wordle in terms of kind of, like, what that process is like, and I, I just wanna say, I'm really proud of how thoughtful and considerate our games team was about the integration process. Because Wordle players feel such connection to the game, and we really wanted to make sure not to interfere with the core magic of the experience. I mean, if you are an eight-year-old kid or an 88-year-old adult, (laughs) like, you know, they... Like, there's real resonance with Wordle, and people just have such a connection to it, and we really wanted to make sure we, we didn't mess it up. And so if you wanna... Like, do you wanna go a little bit deeper just on-

   10. LRLenny Rachitsky37:00

       Yeah, absolutely.

   11. AHAlex Hardiman37:01

       ... what that process was like? Because we, we definitely learned a lot. So-When we acquired Wordle, it was a simple web game with no backend. So that meant that people's stats and streaks, which was, you know, like, that was the value in terms of, like, social currency that people were sharing after playing. Those stats and streaks were stored in local browsers, and it was really important for us, you know, to make sure that the game board experience and the core loop of the game remained unchanged. But we also found that because everything was stored locally and people care so much about their stats and streaks, if they got a new iPhone, if they switched browsers, all of a sudden they li- they lost all of that, that history that they had with the game. So what we decided to do was undertake a project to connect Wordle to a New York Times account, um, which was free, 'cause Wordle is a free game, just so that it knows who you are and so that your stats and streaks can be protected. And then we could also bring Wordle to more surfaces, because we wanted... You know, if you go to the homepage of the news app or if you go to the games app, we wanted to make it easier to find, because people would come for Spelling Bee or Crosswords, and they, they also wanted their Wordle. And it was a, it was a pretty big effort to rewrite Wordle in our tech stack, give people the ability to store their stats and streaks, you know, bring games to, to all of our major surfaces. And we just tried to do it in a, in a thoughtful way where we didn't break anything, the experience was hopefully seamless, and that the only thing you would notice that's changed is that the New York Times knows enough about who you are so that your stats carry over and you can, you can play anywhere. Um, but that doesn't mean that there aren't some surprises along the way, and... Especially when you're doing backend work. We had this pretty crazy moment a couple months ago, right when the Supreme Court's draft ruling on Roe v. Wade leaked, and an engineer on the games team happened to notice that the Wordle solution the next day was "fetus," which is just an extraordinarily bad coincidence, because the word had been loaded into the game by the game founder months beforehand. And, you know, it was so important for us that we didn't have this lovely diversion from the news feel almost like it was commentary on a very, you know, contentious story that was, that was happening. And so I don't know if you, if you caught wind of that, but-

   12. LRLenny Rachitsky39:17

       No.

   13. AHAlex Hardiman39:17

       ... um, you know, you'd think that you could easily change the word on the backend, but because we were mid-stream on the migration process and some users were on the original Wordle game (laughs) , others had migrated to the new version, it meant that we actually couldn't change the word on the backend for everyone, only for some people. And so this was a moment where we just, you know, had to come out and really (laughs) kind of tell the world, "We're mid-integration. We're really not trying to communicate more than Wordle being a fun, you know, diversion from the news. Um, here's what happened and why." And everyone understood. Like, if it's... You know, this is where, like, coming out, being really transparent about the facts, and in some cases, just exposing more about the product development process, really helps demystify some of the rumors that people might otherwise think.

   14. LRLenny Rachitsky40:03

       Oh-

   15. AHAlex Hardiman40:03

       It was one of those, like, "Oh, man, couldn't have imagined that that, uh, type of terrible coincidence would happen," but-

   16. LRLenny Rachitsky40:11

       Right.

   17. AHAlex Hardiman40:11

       ... you just have to be prepared for everything, even when you're, you know, integrating what should just be a fun game.

   18. LRLenny Rachitsky40:16

       Yeah. I imagine no, no matter what you tell people, some folks are just not gonna believe-

   19. AHAlex Hardiman40:21

       (laughs)

   20. LRLenny Rachitsky40:21

       ... your very simple explanation (laughs) of what was going on.

   21. AHAlex Hardiman40:23

       Uh, it's, it's true. All you can do is, you know, be as honest and transparent. And what I will say is, a lot of people still think we try to make Wordle harder. We don't. I promise. It's not a thing. (laughs)

   22. LRLenny Rachitsky40:34

       Mm-hmm. Yeah. It's not like the crossword puzzle where it gets harder every day of the week.

   23. AHAlex Hardiman40:38

       No, no. It's really-

   24. LRLenny Rachitsky40:40

       Yeah.

   25. AHAlex Hardiman40:40

       ... uh, it's, it's not. It's not.

   26. LRLenny Rachitsky40:43

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9. 42:00 – 47:11

   What it was like to work at the New York Times during the onset of Covid

   1. LRLenny Rachitsky42:00

      Are there any other stories that come to mind of just, like, that reflect just how interesting/wild it is to work at the New York Times as a product leader?

   2. AHAlex Hardiman42:11

      I mean, if we sort of go back to, um, when I started at the New York Times, because I started in late 2019, it was, it was just right before the pandemic. And so it was pretty wild to come back to the company and to get sort of shifted into this moment of needing to build products that really were trying to help people through the moment at a time when our journalists were covering the story and all the New York Times employees were trying to live through it. Like, it was, it was COVID 24/7 in terms of work and life. And for me, I remember, you know, in the earliest days when we were s- first really reporting on COVID and kind of learning about it, we had reporters on the ground in Wuhan even before we knew how COVID was transmitted. And then when the world shut down, for the Times, we went fully remote in March 2020. And I remember the day so well because it was the beginning of spring break. Of course, all, all plans were canceled. My kids, I had no idea what to do with them. So my husband and I panic-packed, put them in a car, drove to go see some friends in Vermont, and we decided we were gonna do like a-... a kid daycare pool share (laughs) just to kind of figure out how to keep working with, with someone overseeing the kids. And we got there late at night, and I literally just went into a laundry closet. (laughs) And I didn't emerge for two weeks because my Slack was blowing up about all of the work that we needed to do to make our products as useful as possible. The kids were being crazy, and we just had to get to work. And what was really stunning about this moment in time was that as people were getting sick and we were reporting about all of the trends that we were seeing, we saw that other institutions, especially the government, were not actually stepping up to help people understand the basic facts about what was happening. And so, this is like a product leader is a real wartime moment where you just need to blow up roadmaps, share context with everyone, and say, "Okay, everyone, like, we have a totally different mandate than what we did a couple weeks ago. Given the needs in the world, and, like, the mission of The New York Times and our purpose, which is to help people access information to make informed decision about their lives, we're gonna do a whole bunch of new things. We're going to build a comprehensive public dataset of COVID ba- cases." Nobody else was doing it, so we really just started kind of scraping and pulling this together in what was a single spreadsheet at the time. We pulled a bunch of engineers from other teams to go help build out that database. We launched entirely new formats and data tools to make our journalism a lot more easier to follow, you know, things like, you know, tools to be able to look up, uh, infection rates and eventually vaccination rates down at your, like, local ZIP Code level. We made our most important COVID coverage free to everybody. It was really important that if it was something related to public safety, we didn't put it behind a paywall. Our mission is to, to do better than that, and so we, we really made sure that we had that th- information available to everyone. We also just found that for journalists who hadn't actually been in Wuhan, (laughs) they just needed tips too on internal safety guidance for reporting, and so we made that publicly available. And it was just one of those really interesting moments where everything felt so crazy in this moment of crisis, but building purposeful products that made a really difficult moment feel not only possible but promising was one of the most unifying moments, I would say, for our teams. Because even though people were working so hard and, like, balancing work life and personal life, no one doubted for a second that the work they were doing was of greater good for the world. And there's, there's real privilege in being able to, to kind of spend your time doing those things, but it's, I mean, it's one of the biggest news stories of our lifetime. And to be at the forefront of that, I think for all of us, was a pretty incredible and kind of humbling experience.

   3. LRLenny Rachitsky45:56

      Wow, people talk about having impact and, like, having driving impact, and it's usually, like, move this metric some percentage, but that is some incredible impact helping people avoid COVID and avoid dying, th- keeping their families safe. It's gotta be some of the most fulfilling work that you and your team has done, and ideally wouldn't have happened, but was also probably incredibly fulfilling.

   4. AHAlex Hardiman46:20

      Thank you for saying that. I mean, one of the most validating metrics that we did look at was we realized that at the height of, of the pandemic when there was just so much confusion about literally what to do, like how to live each day, in March 2020, we saw that half of the country came to The New York Times. And so there is something, again, that is just so powerful about very straightforward data journalism, deep reporting, service guidance on, like, how to make a mask (laughs) if you don't have one, just like all of these basics. And just seeing the whole organization pivot from their normal job into this mode was, was pretty incredible. And th- and the world responded, which was, which was really validating too.

   5. LRLenny Rachitsky47:02

      I imagine there's also a bit of burnout that happens working where it kind of goes on and on and on, and you're like, "Oh my god. When is this gonna slow down?"

10. 47:11 – 49:26

    How to avoid burnout on a product team

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky47:11

       How do you help people avoid burnout? How do you catch burnout as a leader on a product team?

    2. AHAlex Hardiman47:16

       This is, um, one of the most, honestly, hard and important topics that I think we're, we're always still grappling with. I mean, as, as a company, we really did try to lead originally with giving people more time off, more support with, like, financial support and other assistance with daycare, health benefits, li- it's like we... Like all of, all of the basics. I think now what we're really trying to do beyond that is be so much more focused on the things that we need to do and all of the things that we're really happy to stop doing because part of, I think, context switching is one of the things that is really, really difficult. It's hard to context switch in your job. It's really hard to context switch across your job and your life. There are a lot of things that we, you know, as, as a company can't necessarily (laughs) control in people's lives, but within the job, the places where we can be so much more focused and thoughtful about the small number of important things that we must do at a given point in time, that's really the place we're really trying to come in and be as empathetic and as honest about what we need to do and what we don't need to do. So a lot of it really comes down to, I think, making hard calls. We're not always perfect at it. (laughs) You know, I'm sure that there are things that we could be more, more diligent about, but I would say over... On balance, we've seen a lot of people stay at the company because they're figuring out they work remotely, maybe they come back to the office, but they're figuring out how to live their life in a very different way from a couple of years ago, and we're really here to try to meet them and make that as possible as possible. We need incredible people across a bunch of different skill sets, a bunch of different backgrounds, and the only way to do that is to really be, you know, very kind of flexible and accommodating in terms of trying to meet people where they are in their lives. But it's, it's tr- it's tricky. There is no, no perfect answer for this, but we, we're really trying because the success of the company only works when we have people who feel valued and like they can do their best work and live really rich lives on top of that. And I think we're all still figuring out what that looks like now that we're starting to come out of the official pandemic and really just learning how to live with COVID.

    3. LRLenny Rachitsky49:24

       Right. Absolutely.Just

11. 49:26 – 52:21

    How the New York Times has set itself apart with its subscription package

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky49:27

       a couple more questions, beg-

    2. AHAlex Hardiman49:28

       Yeah.

    3. LRLenny Rachitsky49:28

       ... before we get to our very exciting lightning round.

    4. AHAlex Hardiman49:31

       Yeah.

    5. LRLenny Rachitsky49:31

       Whereas the New York Times in the next five, 10 years as a product specifically different from other folks? And then broadly, I don't know, do you have any insights or opinions on just what is the future of news? (laughs) Do share.

    6. AHAlex Hardiman49:42

       I think The New York Times is in a, a pretty unique spot compared to other news organizations right now, and I have tremendous respect for, you know, other high-quality organizations like The Journal and The Post and the FT and The Guardian. They're, they're just doing such incredible work. But when I go back to what differentiates us, it's this idea of becoming an essential subscription that really helps people. It, like, meets their most important news and life needs across all of the categories that we've been talking about, right? Like news, games, audio, cooking, et cetera. And up until, I would say, this year, we were more of a news brand with a collection of adjacent lifestyle products. But with the acquisition of Wordle and The Athletic, along with just the continued growth of cooking and Wirecutter and some, some of our other offerings, I really do think, like, that has transformed us into a brand capable of really being th- that essential subscription that helps every single day people with news and life needs in a way that doesn't just associate The New York Times with one category. It's like imagine that, you know, you open the New York Times app and you are starting with a great breaking news story and then you skip over to the latest coverage in China and then, um, you decide that you wanna take a small break to play Spelling Bee and then you wanna, you know, plan a Korean dinner party with Eric Kim, who, I don't know if you know, has some of the best Korean recipes. He's amazing. And then you're like, "Wow, I need a rice cooker to be able to make that recipe, so I need to go get the best recommendation from Wirecutter."

    7. LRLenny Rachitsky51:12

       I just did exactly that actually.

    8. AHAlex Hardiman51:13

       (laughs) Did you?

    9. LRLenny Rachitsky51:14

       Yeah, yeah.

    10. AHAlex Hardiman51:14

        And then, you know, I, um, would love to go watch the Britney Spears documentary, which is also kind of part of The New York Times franchise, which is amazing. Or I wanna go, you know, listen to Kevin Roose, uh, and Casey Newton's Hard Fork podcast, which is wildly fun and just launched a couple weeks ago if you haven't heard that. So, so this is, I think, like, the future for us as being a connected family of products where we can meet so many different needs that are first anchored in news, but then stretched into other facets of your lives. And I, I don't really see other news organizations really operating at that scale and that ambition. And that's, that's the future for us. Like, we really just think that The New York Times can mean so much more to so many more people. And so we're a journalism company, but we're building just tremendous software. (laughs) And so the, the product ambitions are only getting bigger and bigger and that's, that's why I feel like I've got the, the luckiest job in the world right now.

    11. LRLenny Rachitsky52:10

        That is a compelling vision. I feel like you can build your own metaverse in The New York Times-

    12. AHAlex Hardiman52:16

        (laughs)

    13. LRLenny Rachitsky52:16

        ... where you just spend all your days inside The New York Times suite of products.

12. 52:21 – 52:54

    How the New York Times’s products are rooted in helping in the real world

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky52:21

    2. AHAlex Hardiman52:21

       Can I say though, there is a big difference. I think that for us, our software actually helps people with real world outcomes in a very different way. Like, we basically help you get access to information to decide how you're gonna go to the ballot box, right? Like, we give you information to go cook. Like, it's, it's actually... There's something that I think is even more of a connection to the physical world, and it is (laughs) very different from what the metaverse is doing, but that's where we feel like we can drive as much impact as possible.

    3. LRLenny Rachitsky52:48

       You can have your own competing metaverse.

    4. AHAlex Hardiman52:51

       Yeah.

    5. LRLenny Rachitsky52:51

       Um, here's a quick Wirecutter suggest idea for you-

13. 52:54 – 53:36

    Lenny’s tips for improving Wirecutter

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky52:54

    2. AHAlex Hardiman52:54

       Yeah.

    3. LRLenny Rachitsky52:54

       ... (clears throat) while we're chatting. I feel like Wirecutter, I use it all the time. Everything I buy is based on Wirecutter recommendations. But I feel like there's an opportunity for a design-oriented version of Wirecutter. I don't know if you- anyone's thinking about that.

    4. AHAlex Hardiman53:06

       Tell, tell me more.

    5. LRLenny Rachitsky53:07

       Just Wirecutter, like functional stuff. It's like here's the best-

    6. AHAlex Hardiman53:10

       (laughs)

    7. LRLenny Rachitsky53:10

       ... I don't know, rice cooker. But like what's, like, the cutest but also the best? What's, like, the cross-section of looks good in my house and is the best? And like I'll be okay, not the best best if it looks nicer. So like a design lens to Wirecutter.

    8. AHAlex Hardiman53:23

       Oh. So like if it's, it's Wirecutter meets high taste basically.

    9. LRLenny Rachitsky53:29

       Yeah.

    10. AHAlex Hardiman53:30

        I like that. I like that. Okay.

    11. LRLenny Rachitsky53:31

        Yeah. I think there's a market there.

    12. AHAlex Hardiman53:32

        That, that... Uh, I'll definitely bring that back to the team. That's a good one.

    13. LRLenny Rachitsky53:34

        Okay. (laughs) There you

14. 53:36 – 59:58

    The differences and similarities on product teams in a news organization

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky53:36

       go.

    2. AHAlex Hardiman53:36

       There was one-

    3. LRLenny Rachitsky53:37

       Yeah.

    4. AHAlex Hardiman53:37

       There was just one other whole theme, and I don't know if you wanna chat through it, which is what are some of the kind of similarities and differences between product management in news organizations?

    5. LRLenny Rachitsky53:48

       Let's do it. Let's do it.

    6. AHAlex Hardiman53:49

       I mean-

    7. LRLenny Rachitsky53:49

       Oh, that's-

    8. AHAlex Hardiman53:49

       ... totally up to you.

    9. LRLenny Rachitsky53:50

       On record.

    10. AHAlex Hardiman53:50

        But I...

    11. LRLenny Rachitsky53:50

        Yeah, yeah. Let's do it.

    12. AHAlex Hardiman53:51

        If, if, if that's, if that's something you, you'd be interested in talking through.

    13. LRLenny Rachitsky53:55

        Absolutely.

    14. AHAlex Hardiman53:55

        I'm gonna just focus on two themes that I think are, are pretty interesting. So the first is just how we work at The New York Times, and we talked a little bit about working with journalism, and there are some really interesting differences. And the second is just on kind of the idea of impact, and I think how the definition and the understanding of impact can be, can be pretty different. So first just on like the idea of like how we work, I mean, there are a lot of sa- similarities. I would say that product managers at The Times and at tech companies, they have a lot of the same skills. Like, we look for great product sense, great execution, great leadership and drive. Any good PM needs to know their industry, their customers, their market, their business, et cetera. And so we actually do see a lot of crossover between product managers from tech companies who come to The New York Times or tech, uh, PMs at The Times who kind of go, go over to, to tech companies, and I think that that's wonderful. But a key difference of when you're a product manager working at The New York Times is that you work across the full stack of the product, meaning we own our journalism and our content, we own our distribution, and we own our products. And that's really different from working at a big tech platform. Like when I was at Facebook, we controlled the software and the distribution but we didn't control the content, right? We had real limitations on understanding what was passing through. Was it high-quality content? Low-quality content? And it just led to, again, a lot of, a lot of challenges that we already talked about. And so at The Times, when I think about how our best products are born......that's when you bring journalism and product levers together, and that means that PMs at the Times really need to understand the blend of art and science, and so they really need to value expert editorial judgment as they're also looking at individual KPIs, customer research and insights, et cetera. And, like, a, an interesting example, as I was trying to think about what would feel really different doing product at the Times compared to, say, Facebook, is like, let's say you're, you're at the product team and you're working on the home screen. We always start with expert editorial judgment to curate the most important and interesting stories, but on top of that, we're training algorithms on specific data sets, like editorial important scores that actually come from our journalists, and what that allows us to do is actually scale editorial judgment to a large group of readers. And those algorithms, what I think is just, like, really great is they're trained on editorial signal, and then they can still work towards driving towards outcomes like reach, engagement, conversion, et cetera, and that's just, like, such a different way of thinking. Like, when I was at Facebook and we were focused on news ranking and feed, all we could do was train pieces of in- information based on an engagement outcome. We couldn't actually train it based on the quality of that piece of information itself. And so at the Times, you get all... You have, like, 2,000 plus journalists, and you're actually trying to structure their expertise into things that can actually translate into really great algorithmic decisioning, and that's, that's just so different. No one else is, is really doing something in that space. So product managers are becoming very editorially minded, and we're also getting editors to become more product minded, and I, I just think the how we work there is so different and so unique. It's just a, a very, uh, uh, a pretty fascinating part of, I think, the, how the sausage is made, if that makes sense.

    15. LRLenny Rachitsky57:21

        Yeah. Thanks for sharing that. I think that's a really important topic of just, like, how it's different and why it's worth considering trying something like the New York Times as a place to work. Anything else that you wanna share before we wrap up?

    16. AHAlex Hardiman57:33

        I think the only other thing that I have kind of come to learn when you're doing product management at a news organization compared to, to some, a place like Facebook, is just how different the definition of impact can be. Um, you know, when I was at Facebook, we were incredibly focused on scale, engagement, and revenue, which is very appropriate. At a company like the New York Times, you know, we also have a huge ambition to grow our subscriber base, but one thing that's really interesting is that our impact and, like, our business goals are in service of our mission, which is to seek the truth and kind of help people understand the world, not the other way around. And so what it means is that the way that we, you know, think about impact is... (laughs) Growing a giant subscription business, that business exists to strengthen and inform democracy at a time when people are struggling to understand basic facts and struggling to understand each other, and that means that, you know, impact for us is growing subscribers, but it's also when a deeply in-... you know, reported story triggers an important policy change or a new law. And so when you're a product manager, you're involved again in, like, driving specific metrics like engagement or subscribers, but you're also trying to help stories find their real audience in ways that trigger just this whole different side of, of mission and purpose-driven impact, and I didn't feel that when I was at a place like Facebook. But at the Times, I think it just gives kind of product managers a bit of a broader (laughs) kind of aperture in the ways that they think about the relationship between business goals and, and mission impact goals, and it's, it's pretty cool.

    17. LRLenny Rachitsky59:14

        It does feel like it would be hard to find more meaningful impactful work, and so that really resonates.

    18. AHAlex Hardiman59:20

        Oh, well, thanks. There, there are so many other important purposeful products and problems out there to solve in the world. We've talked about this, Lenny, but I just think that product managers and product thinking in so many contexts inside and outside of tech has never been more important in the world than right now, and so we need product managers everywhere, (laughs) like diagnosing key problems and issues, coming up with radically novel solutions. Like, this is the moment, and so it's really great to have your podcast and so many other resources out there to kind of help new and, you know, other PMs just kind of do their best craft, so thank you for having all of us on here.

    19. LRLenny Rachitsky59:56

        Love that. Love that as a closing thought.

15. 59:58 – 1:07:20

    Lightning round

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky59:58

       Well, we reached our very exciting lightning round where I'm just gonna ask you... I th- I have six questions. I'll get through 'em pretty quick, and whatever comes to mind, fire off. We'll go through it fast and fun. Sound good?

    2. AHAlex Hardiman1:00:11

       Great.

    3. LRLenny Rachitsky1:00:12

       Okay. (laughs) What are two or three books that you recommend most to other people?

    4. AHAlex Hardiman1:00:17

       I love, uh, Stripe Press, and so I think a lot of the books that they have are just such good references, like Elad Gil's High Growth Handbook-

    5. LRLenny Rachitsky1:00:26

       Mm-hmm.

    6. AHAlex Hardiman1:00:27

       ... or Will Larson's An Elegant Puzzle, and then some of the more topical ones like Revolt of the Public. I just find that they're, they're evergreen in terms of their utility. Anyone can find value in them, and I just love the craft of the books themselves. I mean, they are, like, amazing products in terms of the content and the form. So that, those are, like, in the, in the product context and work context, those are, those are hands down, I would say, the, the places where I go first. But I do think, and I, I know this is, like, the humanities major in me, I also always try to balance books and my own reading time and recommendations with fiction. I just think it's actually, like, sometimes some of the best ideas and inspiration come when you go, like, one or two steps away from kind of the, the core, the core books that kind of are, are related to your practice. And so right now I'm actually rereading Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin. It's just so beautiful (laughs) and so lyrical, and it sort of gets at, you know, more, more components of the human soul that... I know it sounds kind of crazy, but those are... I- I find, like, those are little sparks of, of ideas that ultimately kind of come back into making products, and particularly news products where they're so creative in, in, like, the way that they tell stories. And so I always try to give people, like-... one pragmatic recommendation and then one slightly more field recommendation over, over in the world of fiction. And so, if you haven't read Giovanni's Room, it is incredible and devastating, and I absolutely recommend it.

    7. LRLenny Rachitsky1:01:51

       Wow. I feel like I, I just keep buying books after doing these podcasts. I have so many books I gotta read. (laughs) And, uh, I'm also feeling like the combination of books you recommended is exactly what I would imagine someone leading product at New York Times would recommend, something product tactical and then just, like, a beautiful piece of fiction. So...

    8. AHAlex Hardiman1:02:08

       (laughs) So I'm, I'm the cliché.

    9. LRLenny Rachitsky1:02:10

       It's great.

    10. AHAlex Hardiman1:02:10

        I love it.

    11. LRLenny Rachitsky1:02:10

        No. No, no, no. I wouldn't put it that way. (laughs) Okay, what's a favorite other podcast that you like to listen to? You mentioned one already. M- is that the one?

    12. AHAlex Hardiman1:02:18

        Everyone should listen to Hard Fork, it's great. But I, I just think The Daily, um-

    13. LRLenny Rachitsky1:02:22

        Mm-hmm.

    14. AHAlex Hardiman1:02:22

        ... continues to be, and again, I know it sort of sounds self-serving, but being able to just listen to Michael Barbaro and Sabrina Tavernise once a day, just like bring in journalists to talk and unpack a meaningful story, it's so visceral. And I just find it to be one of the, the, the daily miracles that The New York Times is able to produce.

    15. LRLenny Rachitsky1:02:41

        Yeah, it's wild. I can't imagine The Daily, a thing like that, doing that. Impressive. What's a f- recent favorite movie or TV show that you've seen that you really enjoyed?

    16. AHAlex Hardiman1:02:51

        I am pretty old school. I am actually rewatching The Wire for the first- th- third time. (laughs)

    17. LRLenny Rachitsky1:02:56

        Wow, that's a lot of time commitment.

    18. AHAlex Hardiman1:02:59

        It is, and I have very little time. But every five years, my husband and I, we just can't get over the characters, the storylines. It's just one of the best-made series for television ever. It's a work of art. And so, I am that person, that is another cliché, who is rewatching The Wire right now.

    19. LRLenny Rachitsky1:03:17

        What's your favorite season?

    20. AHAlex Hardiman1:03:19

        I would probably say it's season three. But, I mean, when Stringer Bell passes away, it's just... I mean, it's the culmination of just so much, um... I probably shouldn't say that for anyone who hasn't seen The Wire. Oh, that's, like, the worst thing ever. (laughs)

    21. LRLenny Rachitsky1:03:32

        Spoiler alert in reverse.

    22. AHAlex Hardiman1:03:34

        Spoiler alert! I'm so sorry. <|agent|><|en|>

    23. LRLenny Rachitsky1:03:36

        But that's not the character name.

    24. AHAlex Hardiman1:03:37

        Just kidding.

    25. LRLenny Rachitsky1:03:37

        That's the actor, right? Right or is that...

    26. AHAlex Hardiman1:03:39

        No. No, I really just totally spoiled that. (laughs)

    27. LRLenny Rachitsky1:03:42

        Okay, that's cool. So you haven't seen it at this point?

    28. AHAlex Hardiman1:03:44

        People- (laughs)

    29. LRLenny Rachitsky1:03:44

        It's over. You're lost.

    30. AHAlex Hardiman1:03:46

        Oh. Oh, boy. How, how awful. That's, like, a cardinal sin. But I do think season four, when it starts to get into the school system, is also just... The g- like, the actors are incredible. I mean, it's some of the best acting that I think has existed over the last couple of decades. So, again, if you haven't seen it, please do yourself a favor and watch it. It's worth every episode.

Episode duration: 1:07:20