Tamar Yehoshua: Why chaotic companies can still win big

ℹ️ EPISODE INFO

Released

September 26, 2024

Duration

1h 17m

Channel

Lenny's Podcast

Watch on YouTube

▶ Open ↗

📝 EPISODE DESCRIPTION

Tamar Yehoshua is the president of product and technology at Glean. Prior to joining Glean, Tamar was chief product officer at Slack, where she led product, design, and research as the company scaled, including a 10x increase in revenue, its public listing, and an acquisition by Salesforce. She also led product and engineering teams at Google, working on search, identity, and privacy, and at A9.com, an Amazon company. Tamar has served on the board of directors for RetailMeNot, ServiceNow, Snyk, and Yext. In our conversation, we discuss:

• Why you don’t need to be a well-run company to win
• The impact of AI on product management and the future of work
• How to build strong cross-functional relationships, especially with engineers
• Lessons learned from working with leaders like Jeff Bezos and Stewart Butterfield
• Strategies for staying ahead in a rapidly evolving tech landscape
• Much more

— Brought to you by:

• Explo—Embed customer-facing analytics in your product: https://explo.co/lenny
• Sprig⁠⁠—Build products for people, not data points: https://sprig.com/getstarted?utm_source=lenny&utm_medium=podcast
• Sidebar—Accelerate your career by surrounding yourself with extraordinary peers: https://www.sidebar.com/lenny?utm_source=lennys&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=waitlist&utm_content=2

Find the transcript at: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/you-dont-need-to-be-a-well-run-company-to-win-tamar-yehoshua Where to find Tamar Yehoshua:

• X: https://x.com/TYehoshua
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tamar-yehoshua-886217/
• Newsletter: https://tamaryehoshua.substack.com/

Where to find Lenny:

• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com
• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/

In this episode, we cover: (00:00) Tamar’s background (02:09) Key advice for career success (06:54) Understanding people and motivations (09:33) The importance of impact (11:20) Navigating company chaos (18:40) Career planning: a different perspective (26:22) Lessons from industry leaders (37:59) Building stronger cross-functional relationships (42:00) Streamlining OKR reviews with async methods (45:26) Why you shouldn’t worry so much about making users unhappy (47:50) The power of listening in leadership (52:34) How to leverage AI so you don’t fall behind (01:06:39) Closing thoughts and lightning round Referenced:

• Glean: https://www.glean.com/
• Snyk: https://snyk.io/
• The Magic Loop: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/the-magic-loop
• MySpace—what went wrong: ‘The site was a massive spaghetti-ball mess’: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/mar/06/myspace-what-went-wrong-sean-percival-spotify
• The PayPal Mafia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PayPal_Mafia
• Jeff Bezos on X: https://x.com/jeffbezos
• Stewart Butterfield on X: https://x.com/stewart
• Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Working-Backwards-Insights-Stories-Secrets/dp/1250267595
• The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Everything-Store-Jeff-Bezos-Amazon/dp/0316219282/
• Unpacking Amazon’s unique ways of working | Bill Carr (author of Working Backwards): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/unpacking-amazons-unique-ways-of
• Ethan Eismann on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ethaneismann/
• Ricky Robinett’s X post about his daughter using Cursor AI to build an app: https://x.com/rickyrobinett/status/1825581674870055189
• Cursor: https://www.cursor.com/
• Marc Benioff on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcbenioff/
• Dreamforce: https://www.salesforce.com/dreamforce/
• Behind the Cloud: The Untold Story of How Salesforce.com Went from Idea to Billion-Dollar Company—and Revolutionized an Industry: https://www.amazon.com/Behind-Cloud-Salesforce-com-Billion-Dollar-Company/dp/0470521163
• Fuzzy Khosrowshahi joins Notion as CTO: https://www.notion.so/blog/notion-new-cto
• Cal Henderson on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/iamcal/
• Rachel Whetstone on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachel-whetstone-497890127/
• Listen: Five Simple Tools to Meet Your Everyday Parenting Challenges: https://www.amazon.com/Listen-Simple-Everyday-Parenting-Challenges/dp/0997459301
• How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk: https://www.amazon.com/How-Talk-Kids-Will-Listen/dp/1451663889
• Figma AI: https://www.figma.com/ai/
• ChatGPT: https://chatgpt.com/
• Claude: https://claude.ai/
• Gemini: https://gemini.google.com/app
• Gong: https://www.gong.io/

...References continued at: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/you-dont-need-to-be-a-well-run-company-to-win-tamar-yehoshua Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com. Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.

🎤 SPEAKERS

• Tamar Yehoshua

  guest

• Lenny Rachitsky

  host

🧾 EPISODE SUMMARY

In this episode of Lenny's Podcast, featuring Tamar Yehoshua and Lenny Rachitsky, Tamar Yehoshua: Why chaotic companies can still win big explores Tamar Yehoshua on product leadership, chaos, careers, and AI’s future Tamar Yehoshua, president of product and technology at Glean and former CPO of Slack, shares hard-won lessons from leadership roles at Google, Amazon, Slack, and beyond.

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