Lenny's PodcastHumanizing product development | Adriel Frederick (Reddit, Lyft, Facebook)
At a glance
WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT
Humanizing Algorithms: Adriel Frederick on Growth, Diversity, and Judgment
- Lenny interviews Adriel Frederick, VP of Product at Reddit (formerly Facebook Growth and Lyft Marketplace), about building products that combine algorithmic power with human judgment. Adriel explains how R&D-style teams can thrive inside large companies, why diversity is a core business advantage (not just “nice to have”), and how his Trinidadian background shaped his product thinking. He shares stories from Facebook and Lyft about true “growth” versus shallow growth hacking, the necessity of putting humans in the loop for algorithmic decisions, and managing products through controversy and public scrutiny. The conversation closes with lessons on transitioning from IC to executive leadership, emphasizing organization design and empathy as the key multipliers of impact.
IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING
5 ideasTreat R&D teams as core, not side projects.
To avoid “organ rejection,” innovation teams must be clearly tied to the company’s core mission, their wins must be shared wins for the whole org, and other teams must still see themselves as owners of innovation—not relegated to just maintenance work.
Diversity dramatically speeds up and improves global product decisions.
Having teams that “look like the world” lets you resolve product debates in minutes instead of weeks, because teammates can draw on real lived experiences across cultures, geographies, and socioeconomic contexts instead of constantly recruiting external panels.
Algorithms need humans to set intent, constraints, and judgment.
Optimization systems are great at chasing a defined objective but blind to long-term effects, social reactions, and product intent; PMs must decide which decisions stay with humans, which go to algorithms, and design the interface between the two.
Stay close to users, especially in moments of controversy.
When public criticism flares (e.g., around driver pay at Lyft), going out to experience the product yourself and talking directly to users reveals which complaints are structurally valid versus which are just power-shift backlash—and what you actually need to fix.
Real growth comes from grinding on core user actions, not clever hacks.
Facebook’s growth came less from magic tricks and more from relentlessly improving fundamentals like sign-up, friend-finding, and habit formation, often via hard, non-glamorous product work rather than one-off “growth hacks.”
WORDS WORTH SAVING
5 quotesAlgorithms don't understand long-term effects, how people might respond, or your intent for the product. It's really important for product managers to play that role.
— Adriel Frederick
If you want people across the world to use your product, you gotta have your teams look like the world. It just makes you so much faster.
— Adriel Frederick
Some controversy is necessary. You’re not going to have any meaningful influence on the world without changing some pattern of behavior.
— Adriel Frederick
There’s a laziness that can creep in where you’re just finding a lot of little things, because they’re easier. You end up doing incremental thinking that doesn’t meaningfully add up to something big.
— Adriel Frederick
The hardest part of empathy is taking my own shoes off. Once I do that and really understand the other person, most of the problems go away.
— Adriel Frederick
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