Lenny's PodcastLinkedIn’s product evolution and the art of building complex systems | Hari Srinivasan (LinkedIn)
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,022 words- 0:00 – 5:04
Hari’s background
- HSHari Srinivasan
It was March 2020, and we were just watching COVID hit, and it was just this heartbreaking kind of moment, where in the feed you were seeing all these people, by no fault of their own, starting to post that they've lost their job. We started seeing in our data as you had some areas, like, I mean, hospitality was really getting hit, but some areas like customer service, they just couldn't hire enough. And you'd think the marketplace would balance pretty quickly. You'd think, okay, like, you know, maybe it's people will start moving to other jobs, but it wasn't happening. And a large reason behind this, people are used to looking for certain particular titles, and they didn't start realizing other people could do this job. So we made a pretty big push in something we call skills-first hiring. This was the idea that we could translate people's experiences into a set of skills, and by that we could help them really start balancing the marketplace with a much different system, right? And so I think that the job market is rebalancing but it's, it's being done, the pathways are being done in a very different way that seems to be, you know, maybe a change that holds through these ups and downs, and that'll be very interesting to see.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
(Instrumental music) Welcome to Lenny's Podcast, where I interview world class product leaders and growth experts to learn from their hard won experiences building and growing today's most successful products. Today my guest is Hari Sreenivasan. This episode has a hilarious story. On Twitter, an account called TheCuriousPM tagged me with a request to have someone from LinkedIn come on the podcast and talk about how they operate, and what they've learned about building products that serve so many different types of customers. I replied asking for any suggestions for who he thought I should specifically talk to, and he suggested Hari Sreenivasan by doing some research on LinkedIn. So I reached out to Hari, told him about this tweet, and he agreed. And so here's the episode. Hari's been at LinkedIn for eight and a half years, and he leads the Talent Solutions Product Team as VP of Product, which is also LinkedIn's biggest business, and includes all of the hiring and learning products which you'll hear about in this episode. In our chat, Hari shares what he's seeing change in the hiring market, what you can do to improve your odds of finding a job through LinkedIn, what he's learned about building and maintaining really complex systems like LinkedIn, tips for getting into product management, and some lessons from his own course on product management. Plus, we also talk about how LinkedIn has been able to become a real source of valuable content, and a lot less cringe over the past couple of years, which I've definitely noticed and I share in our chat. What a fun series of events that led to this episode. A big thank you to Jatin, hopefully I'm pronouncing your name correctly, the guy behind TheCuriousPM account, for making this all happen. With that, I bring you Hari Sreenivasan after a short word from our sponsors. Today's episode is brought to you by Miro, an online collaborative whiteboard that's designed specifically for teams like yours. The best way to see what Miro is all about, and how it can help your team collaborate better, is not to listen to me talk about it but to go check it out for yourself. Go to miro.com/lenny. With the help of the Miro team, I created a super cool Miro board with two of my own favorite templates, my one-pager template and my managing up template, that you can plug and play and start using immediately with your team. I've also embedded a handful of my favorite templates that other people have published in the Miroverse. When you get to the board, you can also leave suggestions for the podcast, answer a question that I have for you, and generally just play around to get a sense of how it all works. Miro is a killer tool for brainstorming with your team, laying out your strategy, sharing user research findings, capturing ideas, giving feedback on wireframes, and generally just collaborating with your colleagues. I actually used Miro to collaborate with the Miro team on creating my own board, and it was super fun and super easy. Go check it out at miro.com/lenny. That's m-i-r-o dot com slash Lenny. Today's episode is brought to you by Brave Search and their newest product, the Brave Search API, an independent global search index you can use to power your search or AI apps. If your work involves AI, then you know how important new data is to train your LLMs and to power your AI applications. You might be building an incredible AI product, but if you're using the same datasets as your competitors to train your models, you don't have much of an advantage. Brave Search is the fastest growing search engine since Bing, and it's 100% independent from the big tech companies. Its index features billions of pages of high quality data from real humans, and it's constantly updated thanks to being the default search engine in the Brave browser. If you're building products with search capabilities, you're probably experiencing soaring API costs or lack of viable global alternatives to Bing or Google. It's only going to become harder to afford these challenges. The Brave Search API gives you access to its novel web scale data with competitive features, intuitive structuring, and affordable costs. AI devs will particularly benefit from data containing thorough coverage of recent events. Lenny's Podcast listeners can get started testing the API for free at brave.com/lenny. That's brave.com/lenny.
- 5:04 – 6:32
How Twitter brought Lenny and Hari together
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Hari, welcome to the podcast.
- HSHari Srinivasan
Thanks for having me. Been a big fan for a long time.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
I really appreciate that. What a fun story behind this conversation. Let me just ask you, how did you feel when I (laughs) cold DMed you on LinkedIn asking you to be on this podcast because of a, a random tweet?
- HSHari Srinivasan
I felt, I felt very honored. I, I, again, I really have followed your work for a while. It's been really amazing to see what you've built, and I'm a huge fan of different builders. And also it was a little bit of an honor that someone, I know we're gonna get into the story in a little bit, but that's, uh, you know, it it, when you work on something oftentimes like jobs and, and learning, it's, it's rare, I think, that it's in the influencer conversation, right? It's not necessarily something you or other people are probably experiencing on day to day. So sometimes I don't know if we get to tell some of these stories, and I really appreciated you reaching out for that.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Yeah, absolutely. So I guess let me just give a big thank you to Jatin Rajvanshi, also known as TheCuriousPM, who tweeted about this concept and then was like, "Hey, talk to Hari about LinkedIn." So thank you, Jatin, for making this happen. It was all thanks to you.And, uh, usually when this happens someone tweets a recommendation of someone, they know each other and I'm like, "Ah, I don't know, that's kind of some promotion of some other person." But you guys don't know each other, right?
- HSHari Srinivasan
We don't, no. But I'm looking forward to meeting you and thank you again for, uh, putting in the word.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Absolutely. And, uh, also thank you to Jotton for recommending a bunch of questions that I'm gonna ask you (overlapping 00:04:09) today.
- HSHari Srinivasan
No, that I didn't know. (laughs)
- LRLenny Rachitsky
(laughs)
- HSHari Srinivasan
So, maybe I shouldn't. (laughs) .
- LRLenny Rachitsky
No.
- HSHari Srinivasan
That I didn't know.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Nope.
- HSHari Srinivasan
But thanks again, Jotton. It's very kind of you.
- 6:32 – 10:14
LinkedIn’s positive evolution, and what they did right
- HSHari Srinivasan
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Yeah. Okay, so let's, uh, roll into some stuff. So I actually wanna start with LinkedIn as a platform broadly. I know you don't work on, like, all parts of LinkedIn and don't necessarily know everything that's going on there. But something I've noticed that's pretty major is it feels like LinkedIn's really made this move from being, like, a very cringey place to post and spend time, to, like, it's actually now interesting, and the feed that I see on LinkedIn is interesting. Oftentimes, even more interesting than Twitter which is crazy to say. Also, it's become the biggest source of traffic for my newsletter, more so than Twitter which I never expected. So, my question is, as far as you know, what is it that y'all did right in the past couple years that has allowed for this shift to happen? 'Cause this is very rare.
- HSHari Srinivasan
Well, first I'm glad you're having a, a good experience with it and, and that's really, really kind to hear. So first of all, it's very interesting you, you, you kind of hit on it. Everything at LinkedIn is a very e-, uh, connected ecosystem. And so one of the things that we always think about is how the whole system fits together, and I'm sure we'll get into it more and more about how we build at LinkedIn. But how you make decisions based on the very complicated ecosystem is actually not very difficult because we're all here to help people connect to economic opportunity. Like, every time there's a discussion something I'm really, really proud about working here is everyone knows how that decision is gonna be made, and it's all about how we're connecting people to economic opportunity. Now, now it was funny, just the other day I was driving, I was in an Uber with, with the person who runs the feed is, who's, it's this guy Coonrush, who's just phenomenal. And we were just talking about this and one of the things he mentioned to me was if you think about what a feed is when it connects someone to opportunity, it's gotta do a couple things really, really well. And we've done a ton of member surveys on this, a ton of thought behind it. The first is, as you make relationship connections across the way, that is a real way by which people get opportunity. They keep in touch with those people, they learn. They might follow someone and hopes in getting to know them and getting that knowledge, and we gotta make sure that that content is getting to them. Then when you think outside the network, we have to make sure that the things that people really want, which they keep seeing are knowledge and advice and ability to get the, the real perspectives they need to get there. Those are the things out of network they want, and we've really, really been focused on driving those two systems, right? How does someone connect to opportunity both through the people and through the content that they actually want? And, and as you know, when you do a feed there's so many decisions that go into that complex system, so many decisions. But we've been really, really trying to make sure that we don't lose sight of that and start tuning all those knobs into that direction.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
So, if we're trying to get even more specific with what has changed-
- HSHari Srinivasan
Yeah.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Clearly there's been, like, a focus internally. Like, is that true? There's just, like, "Hey, let's make this feed a lot more interesting," or is this just, like, a never-ending and then it's actually started to work kind of investment as far as you know?
- HSHari Srinivasan
Well, there's always been a focus on connecting people to opportunity, right? There's always been a q-, uh, a focus on that. And I think what's happened over time is we've gotten more and more clear with what our members really want, which is this ability to feel close to those relationships and the ability to really get that knowledge that they need. And as we've gotten better and, and kind of clearer in that understanding and we've been able to dial the knobs in the right way, I hope it's landing in the right place. I'm always kind of... I don't think it's any place near declaring victory in any of our, any part of this product, right? I think one of the beauty of working with that vision of connecting people to opportunity, there is always some piece of friction. There is always something we could be doing better. And so I'm always hesitant to say, you know, we, we've ever hit that bar, and I know there's probably people who listen to you who probably maybe had not, have now had that experience. And I always encourage you to kind of reach out and let us know ways we can do better. But I'm glad you're having an experience with it and then, to your point, I always feel that, like, as long as we stay focused on that and each of our decisions start moving in that direction, hopefully the product will continue to deliver.
- 10:14 – 11:12
Specific changes that made LinkedIn’s feed more interesting
- HSHari Srinivasan
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Do you know if there's any product changes that have most contributed to that feed becoming much more interesting?
- HSHari Srinivasan
Well, there's a couple things that I think are, are very special that we're working on. And it's hard to say which is most, 'cause a lot of these things obviously accumulate and, and compound over time. But certainly, um, there's a lot of machine learning and, and algorithms that go behind these systems and many of 'em, as we start understanding these are things that people get value by, it's about how do we make sure that we're giving people that interesting knowledge? And as we've gotten crisper on what that means, I think we've been better, better able to build towards it. The other one which is new but I'm just particularly excited about, we're starting to do a lot of things which are gen AI-assisted, right? So you basically can come in and get some prompts and people can provide their perspective on that. And I think that combination, it's very early but it's very exciting on how we might be able to help people unlock knowledge for some of us a billion people now on the platform, knowledge of those billion people in a way that people can find and see.
- 11:12 – 12:21
Understanding the algorithm and what kinds of content perform best
- HSHari Srinivasan
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Awesome. Again, I know this isn't, like, the area you spend all your time on but maybe one more question along these lines.
- HSHari Srinivasan
Yeah, please.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Do you have any sense of the kind of content that works best on LinkedIn in terms of the algorithm? You talk about, like, the algorithm is probably one of the bigger impact things that have changed.
- HSHari Srinivasan
If there's anything with knowledge or advice, I think that's what a lot of people are looking for. Every time we run these surveys, every time we talk to people on what they want, those are the things that really when you connect to opportunity that people kind of seek after in our system. And, and, like, you're a great example of that, right? You're able to give knowledge and advice in an area with, with a lot of depth and I think that maybe that's why you're having, uh, some of the success you're seeing on the platform, which is wonderful to see.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
I think I'm actually not getting as much success as I could because I don't put in the time. I usually just kind of post a simple thing with a link, and I think I could be if I really... Like, I just don't have time to do this, of just, like, post a lot more stuff within the actual post. I think that would do better.
- HSHari Srinivasan
... but that actually makes me hap- I mean, my guess is what you wanna be doing is learning and creating and not spending a lot of time kinda managing the, the... And so maybe, maybe that's actually a good thing, and I'm, it's actually another wonderful thing to hear.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Yeah.
- 12:21 – 15:46
The talent solution product
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Absolutely. Okay, so let's m- let's move to your sweet spot, which is, uh, the talent solution product. Is that, is that what it's called?
- HSHari Srinivasan
Yeah. So it's basically any product on LinkedIn that helps you get a job or learn a skill. Uh, and we have products for recruiters and hirers, jobs. We have products for job seekers, products for... We have LinkedIn Learning, and then certainly, we run a pretty large creator ecosystem for instructors who, uh, post content into LinkedIn Learning.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
And is it true that this is the biggest business within LinkedIn?
- HSHari Srinivasan
It is, uh, it is a very big business between LinkedIn and, uh, it's certainly, uh, hopefully something that, again, if you go back to that vision of connecting people opportunity, it's certainly something that's, I like to think is at very, very core to that, how people get jobs and learn skills.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
So the feed gets all the glory and you, you guys are making all the money.
- HSHari Srinivasan
I would not say that. (laughs)
- LRLenny Rachitsky
(laughs)
- HSHari Srinivasan
But, uh, again, you know, w- we joke about those things and, and I... It's so hard at LinkedIn to separate one product from the other. It's really kind of the way we, we run, it's the way we think about the product, it's really the way we built. Let me just give you, like, a super concrete example of that.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm-hmm.
- HSHari Srinivasan
Certainly, if you have someone coming in and, and looking at the feed, one thing we might do is suggest a job recommendation based on what they're looking for in that feed. And so part of what we have to do is think about how someone who's looking at something in their interest might be driving their job-seeking experience as well. And then when they're looking for a job, it's very important that they know how they can actually get connected in that job. So the relations of the network you build are very much part of that flywheel that go into it. And then, you know, even as we start looking at this, you might be looking at a subject and then you wanna go deeper on it, and there's a course that comes into it as well, right? And so all of this to me is a very, very connected ecosystem on how those items work together in order to give people opportunity. And so we, we sometimes j- uh, we, we certainly have, you know, we b- when I think of it from the outside, it's very different things. But inside, even the way we operate and the way we think about it, it's a very, very connected ecosystem.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
What are the components, again, of this part of the org?
- HSHari Srinivasan
Uh, we think about it as two different marketplaces. There's a hiring marketplace, which is how do we connect job seekers and recruiters and hiring managers? And then there's a learning marketplace, which is how do you connect learners to instructors?
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Got it. And then within hiring, are there sub-components?
- HSHari Srinivasan
Yeah. So again, we, we really think about it as a marketplace. We're generally organized around seekers and hirers. And so there's a team that's kind of working on recruiter, which is probably one of the more kind of flagship products that LinkedIn-
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm-hmm.
- HSHari Srinivasan
... has always been around. A team working on jobs, which is if you ever post a job on LinkedIn, et cetera. And then a team working, uh, to always help job seekers make sure they connect. And then on the other side for learners/instructors, a team working on LinkedIn Learning, which is one of the bigger enterprise learning products in the world. And then a team working to help, uh, instructors. And, uh, many people don't know this. We actually have two large film studios. So we, we bring in instructors. We film a lot of content. We, uh, it's in... We have ones in Europe and, and ones in Santa Barbara. It was all through... Started with the Lynda acquisition. And so we have a big, large team of content creators and, and teams that everyone from, you know, makeup artists to, to script writers, uh, that we get to use over there.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Wow, it's just marketplaces all the way down as you talk about this hiring marketplace, learning marketplace, the feed itself.
- HSHari Srinivasan
Yeah.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
There's probably more I'm not thinking about.
- HSHari Srinivasan
Yeah. It's, uh, very much, uh, the... I mean, one model that we sometimes use internally as well is how do we... eh, we operate as marketplaces inside, uh, uh, an ecosystem. And I think it's, uh, it kind of speaks to the complexity, again, of the product and hopefully somehow how we might operate it.
- 15:46 – 20:24
The shift to skills-first hiring, and how LinkedIn changed their approach
- HSHari Srinivasan
- LRLenny Rachitsky
So I think with your vantage point and being at the center of hiring, a lot is changing within the hiring marketplace in the past, I don't know, year at this point, where it used to be very candidate-oriented, eh, where they had all the power and the salaries were crazy. Everyone's bidding and trying to get people to join their company. And now it's completely opposite. There's so many people looking. Companies have all the power. I'm curious what you've seen-
- HSHari Srinivasan
Yeah.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
... if that's roughly it or what you're seeing basically in the hiring market these days.
- HSHari Srinivasan
Yeah. Well, well first of all, the balance that you're talking about, i- it is shifting in the sense that there are more seekers in the marketplace now and there are fewer open jobs in the marketplace. And then, and of course, that changes how many applications you get for the job and how you have to look through. I think there's a model where people think it's shifting dramatically to exactly the way it was. And I actually think some of the changes that occurred during the last couple years are actually sticking around. And so let me give you a couple examples of where things I think are really changing. So the first thing that happened was... And maybe in my opinion, one of the big changes of the world that no one's really kind of talking about it, uh, to my degree is the impact of it. But there's been a real move to skills-based hiring. So for the longest time... And I'll, uh, I'll give you actually a really concrete example. It was like March 2020 and we were just watching COVID hit, and it was just this heartbreaking kind of moment where in the feed you were seeing all these people, by no fault of their own, starting to post that they've lost their job. And, uh, we started seeing in our data as you had some areas like maybe hospitality was really getting hit, but some areas like customer service that just couldn't hire enough. And, and you'd think the marketplace would balance pretty quickly. You think, okay, like, you know, maybe these people will start moving to other jobs. But it wasn't happening. And a large reason behind this, people are used to looking for certain particular titles and they didn't start realizing other people could do this job. So we made a pretty big push on something we call skills-first hiring. This was the idea that we could translate people's experiences into a set of skills, and by that, we could help them really start balancing the marketplace with a much different system, right?
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm-hmm.
- HSHari Srinivasan
We... Instead of saying, I need to have this talent, you can say, I need someone who can do negotiation and I need someone who can really help me kind of un- understand how to de- de-escalate a customer situation. And you find a lot of people in hospitality have about 70% of the skills needed for customer service and of course you could train off the rest. And so we started seeing the skills-first hiring really start taking off. And at this point, roughly 47% are ru- recruiters will come and explicitly use skills when they start looking for candidates. And that's a pretty big change that we're actually seeing hold. So it's not like people are starting to... You know, I know it's early in some of these changes, but it's, it's a change where I think people are still continuing to start looking at skills.Another one was this concept of there's a lot more people who are starting to look for jobs by values. They were saying, "Look, you know, most job sites work by, you know, you come in and you look for a job and a title, and that's kinda how you navigate the world." And we started realizing a lot of people wanted to come in and instead of look at it like that, they may say this is, "Look, I really want a job. This aligned my purpose," or even by an interest. "I may want something in AI." And we started launching collections and the way to filter in these things. We're still seeing some of that usage today. And so, I think that the job market is rebalancing, but it's, it's being done, the pathways are being done in a very different way that seems to be something that, you know, may be a change that holds through these ups and downs, and that'll be very interesting to see.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
What's interesting is it's not like this would change on its own. This is as... You're, you're the biggest jobs marketplace in the world, right?
- HSHari Srinivasan
We, we have a, (laughs) we have a lot of professional jobs in our platform and a lot of professional seekers.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Okay, probably mysterious... I imagine it is. I don't know. I guess Indeed might be a competitor. But okay, let's say it's one of the bigger job markets. Uh, like you influence the way jobs are sought and posted, right? And how people find jobs. So in a sense, designing... Sounds like basically there was an internal decision, "Let's focus on a skills approach." And what's cool about that is that changes the way hiring happens in the world.
- HSHari Srinivasan
You know, it's one of the things that I think is so interesting about building products today is, you know, it has to clearly be something people want. Like if we had just said, "We're gonna go like this," and every hire was like, "I don't wanna do this," or every job seeker said, "This is not care about," I don't think anything would click. But you also have to be receptive enough to kind of amplify that signal and allow it work through a system so that it could actually be easy to use. And so I, I don't know if it was... I don't, I don't think we said that, you know, our, you know, they, there was some, "Hey, we gotta go and, and do this value-based thing." I think we started feeling it and hearing it from members, and then as we adapted, these things start amplifying as they come through. I, I do think that's hopefully something that, you know, I, I think about a lot is, you know, let's just make sure that we, we keep a pulse on what people want, and we make sure that we can kind of get that through a system at a pretty fast pace. Because then, we will hopefully continue to be a place where people wanna go look for jobs and make
- 20:24 – 22:13
The open-to-work signal, and the newly released open-to-internal-work signal
- HSHari Srinivasan
hires.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
What I was thinking about as you were just chatting is this Open to Work feature that LinkedIn has and how... I remember days before that existed and there's people used to just like jerryrig-... "Hey, I'm hiring," or, "I'm looking for a job." And there's always this sense that if you're open to work, you're not as good, 'cause why would you be amazing and open to work and not hired? And I'm curious if you were even part of this experience, just like what was it like to come up with that approach to how to communicate that you're open to work?
- HSHari Srinivasan
It's been through phases, and I think those phases really reflect on kind of perception of how it's changed. I mean, in the beginning it was you could say you're open to work, but it was a secret signal to recruiters, if you will.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm.
- HSHari Srinivasan
That certainly still exists, but now we said you can more publicly say it, and maybe it'd be a feed post. And then we kind of started launching When a lot of the stigmas of unemployment changed dramatically because everyone started understanding you're in this different situation. Uh, and, and we started h- putting the frame. And, and, uh, that's kind of the, the more iconic way I think people are associated with now. It's funny. Just this week we tried something new and I, I feel like it's almost the same journey, um, in, uh... There are many customers, as, as you can imagine, have LinkedIn Learning and, and what... And LinkedIn Learning is typically an enterprise product. It works across your employee base. So we're trying to do open to internal work where you can say, "I'm actually at the point where I may want to next play internally in my role," and an internal recruiter can see you. And as you can imagine, I would actually even maybe argue more stigma about being concerned about upsetting your manager, and certainly there's, there's different cultures in companies about this. And I, I, I have a feeling in, you know, sometimes we like to think five, 10 years out, I think it's gonna go on the same journey. I, uh, that's kind of one hunch I have that it'll also be an employ me, employment-driven kind of way internally for people to find their next play. And it'll be interesting to see how it plays out. But already it's, uh, you can feel a little bit of that tension right when we launched it and kind of knowing, I hope that I... Let, let's see how this goes.
- 22:13 – 24:55
The PM talent landscape, and tips for landing a PM role
- HSHari Srinivasan
- LRLenny Rachitsky
You're talking about how hiring is changing. I'm curious how PM hiring specifically is changing. A lot of people listening to this podcast are product managers. Is there anything unique you're noticing there?
- HSHari Srinivasan
Maybe a couple stats that could be very helpful. I- if you're having a hard time finding a PM role, let's start with this, you're probably not alone.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm.
- HSHari Srinivasan
Uh, we publish it. You can go to our economic graph data. This is all public. We publish this. But if you look at tech, it's down about 50% year over year, and we look at kind of hires over total population on LinkedIn. You can go to our economic graphs and you can see the how it compares across industry. And, and we don't look at the functional data as much, but as you c-... Uh, the PM data seems to be trending just slightly even maybe below software engineers in that a- as well, which is maybe a comp for this. And I know-
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm-hmm.
- HSHari Srinivasan
... not everything is perfect, industry to function kind of cuts. So, so it is a difficult, it is a difficult place, but I'll give you a couple tips because I imagine that may be helpful for, uh, a couple of the listeners, and it's certainly one of the larger inbounds of things I get. The first is in, in those kind of markets you do wanna make sure that the more you can do to kind of form relationships and kind of say that this is, you know, we can... Which is always helpful. Now, I know that not everyone has relationships, but you can always try to develop those at different places and across LinkedIn as well. Uh, but that's one thing I would really, really start to look for. The second thing I would really do is we have launched the way now to come in and kind of signal obviously that you're interested in a role. We have those open to work capabilities, but then each of job has a set of skills that they're looking for under it, like we talked about in skills versus hiring. And against each skill, you can actually add different kinds of credentials, and I would really, uh, encourage people to add work products if that's something that they're actually building. You could add, uh, different kinds of recommendations or other things they can associate with that skill, and those credentials against it I think are becoming much more interesting for people to say, "Oh, this is someone I'm actually looking for." And then the third thing I would really encourage kind of PMs to start, uh, looking through is I think in every... This is probably more personal than anything in kind of data, but every PM job is different, and if you have experience in that industry and you're able to kind of show that you have experience in the industry or some kind of understanding of it, I think that's a way to separate. And so I'd really start zoning in on roles where you might see that kind of the, if you don't have the functional experience, kind of the industry experience, and I think that that would kinda go a long way as how, uh, to help you differentiate from, yes, what's probably more candidates or more applications going into each role.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
And when you say industry experience, what's an example of that?
- HSHari Srinivasan
Imagine that you are applying for a, a PM role, but that particular software is in, I don't know, automotive tech. If you happen to have worked in automotive before or have a knowledge about cars, that's a very helpful way to get in. And I think if you're able to show that, you can show an industry knowledge and an understanding of it, I think it's a real nice way to think about how to position yourself against some of the other candidates.
- 24:55 – 28:38
How to optimize your LinkedIn profile to get noticed by recruiters
- HSHari Srinivasan
- LRLenny Rachitsky
What else can a person looking for a job do to improve their chances of a recruiter basically finding them? I feel like that's probably the best, uh, tactical thing they can do, 'cause a lot of LinkedIn is recruiters reaching out and finding you.
- HSHari Srinivasan
There's two things that anyone who's hiring is always gonna look for. They're gonna look for your skills and capabilities and they're gonna look for your intent and interest in the role. And a lot of our products and the pathways we try to do are making those things simpler. So maybe we'll just start with interest and interest, and we'll move back to skills in a minute. A couple things we've launched recently, and I think they're symbolic of other ways you can connect. If you go to a company page and you looking at the company, and they've, I, I think they have to opt into this in some degree, and you say, look, you can say you're interested in that company even though they don't have roles. And when the next role comes up, they'll have a signal that this person's actually very interested in this role. And that's an easy way to kinda signify from the early stage your ro- you know, that you have interest in them. And that way when they open up a role, as you can imagine, they start looking through. They'll have a spotlight in recruiter and they can click on it and come through. Certainly, you can go into open work and say that this is something, you know, that I'm open to work right now, and you can signify to the whole population that, you know, this is an area that you wanna go for as well. And I would encourage both of those in some ways. If you're looking for a role, be open about it and tell the companies that you're looking for there. Those are really high signals of intent. The other thing you can do on LinkedIn is you can actually go through when you say open to work and you can specify, like, particular kinds of jobs and things you're looking for. And I think that more detailed intent helps make sure you're showing it to the right place. On the skills side, uh, we kinda talked about a little bit, but I do think there's a big change. When you were just looking at title, I think you only had one way to really prove that you had the skills. You had to have that title, which is very hard to break in. In a world where you're looking at skills, you can go through and say, "Look, I can do these things," and you can put evidence behind it. And I'd really encourage people to do that. If you just go to kinda any job post, you can see the skills. You can say add, and you can see all the evidence and how you can add it. And I would really encourage people to do that because when people are in recruiter and they're looking for skills, profiles pop up and you can scroll over a skill and you can actually see all those evidence. And you can basically, a recruiter could say, "Oh, this is why I'd recommend you to this hiring manager." And, and I think you will find that that's a, a hopefully a very useful way of doing it.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
I'm gonna lob this question like a, like a fishing line to see if there's, catches anything.
- HSHari Srinivasan
(laughs)
- LRLenny Rachitsky
And we'll see (laughs) if not, we'll move on. Are there any stats that you've seen of just like if you do XYZ, your chances of getting hired or getting people reaching out are just, go significantly higher?
- HSHari Srinivasan
Yeah. Uh, open to work certainly has a high, uh, signal noise. And it's, uh, as you can imagine when someone's looking to fill a role, that's one they want. Uh, we are early in company commitments, but we are seeing some signal there that we kinda move through. Skills has a pretty high signal as well. Uh, when you're able to come through and, and, and show and demonstrate your skills, we're seeing, uh, some, some correlation to basically people getting a role. And then the final one that is harder for us to look through but it's certainly important, I do think we, we show the hiring manager on a lot of the roles we show these people through. And it's harder for us to kinda trace that because of the, the way the outcomes kinda work. But I would really encourage people to, to look through that and see if you can get in front of sh- those people.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Is there a max seniority that you find works effectively on LinkedIn to find a job? Like, I imagine, like, CPOs aren't finding jobs on LinkedIn. Is there just, like, if I'm looking for a job, is, do you have, like, a rule of thumb of, like, if you're at this level, maybe you're not gonna have a lot of luck? If you're below this level...
- HSHari Srinivasan
We certainly have CPO jobs that are posted, but the difference often is job posts versus recruiting.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm-hmm.
- HSHari Srinivasan
And more and more senior roles are often recruited. And so we find that people will use LinkedIn in order to connect to a CPO, and many people who are senior will say, "Oh, I got a message on LinkedIn, and that led to this," or they made a long-term recruiting contact. Uh, but it may not happen through you finding a job and hitting the application
- 28:38 – 30:38
Hari’s first product review at LinkedIn
- HSHari Srinivasan
button.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Let's talk about LinkedIn as a company to work at and culture maybe for a bit. You told me that you have a story about your first product review when you joined LinkedIn and how that was, uh, wild. Can you just tell that story? I haven't heard this yet.
- HSHari Srinivasan
Yeah. So I, I came through a, a small acquisition that they made of our company, and I thought it was such a telling moment in this, uh, first product review. I, I went in, and as you can imagine, when you join a company, there's a lot of advice on, um, kinda how you should make that product work. And I didn't know anything. I'd never been a PM. And I remember kind of taking a lot of that advice and putting together a presentation and just, uh, getting destroyed during that review. I think Jeff was the, uh, head of product and CEO at that point. And you know, in a, in a very kind way, it was basically like, "Wait, this doesn't make any sense." And, and, and I just remember driving home and kinda calling my wife. I'm like, "I think I might be fired. I'm not sure if I was fired." But he was very kind about it, and he's like, "Just come back in X," I think, like, five, four weeks. And I remembered at that point, I was like, "If you're gonna go in and, you know, you only have one more shot, just do something you believe in, right? And, and kinda make sure it, it kinda works." And we started from that point, and we worked backwards from there on this concept of, hey, I do believe that, you know, the most important thing is connecting opportunity, and we should really understand how to do that, and let's just start from there. And it went very well. And to me, it was another way of you, you're in these large systems, you're in these large companies, you're in these large... You, you... I think LinkedIn is very special because no matter what it is, it's got a very good North Star. And it was a moment for me to kinda really hammer that home, that, like, as long as you keep that North Star in, you know, ahead of you, you're gonna be just fine. And I think it's, uh, you know... I, I never worked at a place like that before. And I think a lot of times people wonder, we have... I mean, you can imagine, we have... The way we're talking about, we certainly have an engagement ecosystem. We have the hiring business, and we have a marketing solutions business. We have a big premium business. Uh, you can imagine when you're trying to make decisions across that, it could get very, very complicated. And I think when people ask me to describe LinkedIn, I often start with that story because I feel like it, you know, it helps cut through how decisions are made and, and kinda what is seen as success.
- 30:38 – 33:24
LinkedIn’s North Star, and how to operationalize the North Star at any company
- LRLenny Rachitsky
And just to clarify, so that north star is that phrase that you used of just connecting people to economic opportunity, right?
- HSHari Srinivasan
That's it. That's it. And it sounds, uh, I know it sounds bigger than it seems, but I can probably, uh, you know, time example again, you can understand when someone's driving or not and having been here for a little bit now, you can understand when someone knows that and when someones doesn't. It's a, it's a hard thing to, to lose track of.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Yeah. It does sound vague and like a nice fuzzy, warm thing that peop- people can say. What you're saying is that it's actually, like, it's brought up in meetings constantly and product reviews. Like you're saying in this product review, everything changed when you came at it from that one perspective.
- HSHari Srinivasan
Yeah. I mean, this was, uh, my first product here was the profile. Eh, you can make a profile that does a lot of different things, as you can imagine. You could, uh, you know, you could think about how identity could be used in many different ways and what you should prioritize and not. But if you can explain why this is the thing that you should do that would help someone, you know, really do what they wanna do, maybe it's, you know, have an incredible, uh, podcast and, and send that out there. Maybe it's helping them connect to a job. But if you can understand intent and how this unlocked, and why you wanna prioritize that item, all of a sudden the world gets a lot simpler.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
How does that actually get operational, like is it a company? Is it just the leaders remind people of that? It's like painted on the walls? How is that a thing that people come back to over and over?
- HSHari Srinivasan
I do think it's a lot of repeat, repeat, repeat. I do think that's it. I do think the culture has a pretty high immune system now, in the sense that when you aren't operating by that, people can see it and they, they operate against it. But I often, I also think it's probably the, uh, I think when, uh, you know, when Jeff
- NANarrator
(laughs)
- HSHari Srinivasan
... was saying and Ryan and they, they are just exceptional at continuously repeating that. And it's been so consistent for so long that I think it's just kind of the DNA now. And I- I do think it's exceptional. I think it's exceptional leadership and I've learned so much from kind of watching it and how it's, how it gets operated.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Is there a metric associated with that when people use it in a way of like, "No, that's not actually what we mean." Is there some way of making it even more concrete in goals, metrics, ways to understand if people are actually achieving that?
- HSHari Srinivasan
Yeah, totally. So, so I think at the next level of operation what we think about is, you know, when we run these marketplaces throughout this ecosystem that can help people What are the outputs that they measure? So, so I'll just give you mine for example. We think a lot about number of hires, converted hires. How many people did we match? Which is a real tangible way of looking at opportunity.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Yeah.
- HSHari Srinivasan
And then number of people who learned a skill, which is usually in this world measured more by time than anything. If you learn, spend time for X amount of minutes, we kind of that skill, 'cause oftentimes skills don't have a direct outcome as you can measures go through. And so we, we basically look at those things more than any other to say how are, how successful that we are operating that marketplace.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Got it. Those make total sense to me.
- 33:24 – 35:32
LinkedIn’s members-first value
- LRLenny Rachitsky
- HSHari Srinivasan
Yeah.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Are there other core values of LinkedIn that are public that you can share?
- HSHari Srinivasan
I mean, you can Google them too and so they're very, very public but, uh, the, probably the one that I think is most, uh, important to talk about, uh, is, is in this, in this world is, you know, there's this concept of members first. And I think any time you run an ecosystem as complex as we do and you think about even if you're trying to connect people opportunity, there's two people, how are you gonna decide right now who needs it? I think having clarity on which piece of the ecosystem is, is, you know, gonna be where the focus is, it helps us make sure we establish a relationship of trust first, make sure to understand who's getting, you know, access to data, make sure we understand what decisions are being made. And I've always loved that as a principle that we've stuck by.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Yeah. I see it on the page here, "We put members first." (laughs) So-
- HSHari Srinivasan
Really checks out is what you're telling me.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Checks out, checks out.
- HSHari Srinivasan
(laughs)
- LRLenny Rachitsky
What's interesting is the connecting people to opportunity, economic opportunity is not one of these values. It seems like it's even broader.
- HSHari Srinivasan
Yeah.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mission of the company basically.
- HSHari Srinivasan
Company, yeah.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
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- 35:32 – 38:09
Building and maintaining complex systems
- LRLenny Rachitsky
You've kind of touch on this idea of a complex system and I wanna spend a little bit more time there. So LinkedIn is as you said very, very complicated. There's, uh, all these marketplaces within marketplaces. There's so many customers you gotta make happy. They all have to work together. I'm just curious what you've learned about building-
- HSHari Srinivasan
Yeah.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
... and maintaining a complex ecosystem like that.
- HSHari Srinivasan
That's a great... It- it's a fantastic question and it's, you know, first I, I, I just openly think I've first of all just career-wise always been drawn to that.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm.
- HSHari Srinivasan
I think, um, you know, there's many kind... We, we talk about product as a whole, right? We always talk about it as a whole. But there's many different things you can build, many different types of things and then we kind of go maybe there's hardware and software consumer goods. I, I actually try to kind of think about products by their complexity curve a lot. I think that the skills you need to manage a complicated kind of ecosystem versus maybe the skills you need to design something that's less interconnected are quite different. And I can get- I will get to the details maybe of what I mean-
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm-hmm.
- HSHari Srinivasan
... in, in a minute. But I do think LinkedIn is a particularly complicated place and I do think that the skillsets that you, you think you're gonna try to manage are in a complicated ecosystem are quite different. So, so maybe some tactics that can help if it's, uh, something we're talking about.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Yeah, let's do it.
- HSHari Srinivasan
You know, one of the things that I, I often think about is this concept of cause and effect, right? Like if you have non interco... So if you have non-interconnected things, it's actually quite easy not to have to think about that. You made something people love and, you know, I wrote a, I wrote a, a children's book not too long ago and it was fun. It was awesome to write. Once it was done, it was kinda done and it was out there and it was able to go. And that's a little bit different than here, right? If you kinda make a change like open to work, all of a sudden you're thinking through the perception of someone on the other side. What is that gonna do? Are they gonna use the platform less or more? You're thinking about customers. What are they gonna do with that data? Are they gonna, to your point, perceive someone in a different way or not? You have to think through third and s- and se- second, and third, and maybe even fourth order effects and kinda manage that as you go through. And I think that is something we really pride ourselves on is how do we start thinking through these different things and how do we start measuring 'em as we go? And that is one. The second thing I actually think is that, it does lead to your point a lot, you need a different kind of decision-making mechanism because there's a lot more ties in the ecosystem and a lot of people who just need way to break it. And we've kinda put in things like, we have something called Rapid, which is a really easy way to know who the decision-maker is. Just, you know, you, you line up who's a recommender, who has to agree, who's a decision-maker. We have something called the five-day escalation rule, which makes sure that those items are in, and I think you lead a lot more of those fuse... You know, I don't know what they're called, fuse limits or just systems in place in order to manage that complexity so that things get done. And, and I think that those processes are actually really, really important to make sure that the ecosystem
- 38:09 – 39:51
The RAPID framework and the Five-Day Alignment framework
- HSHari Srinivasan
can run.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Let's talk about these two processes. Rapid, and what was the other one? Five day...
- HSHari Srinivasan
Yeah, five-day alignment and, uh, they've both been around LinkedIn for a little bit, but they're great. The Rapid is just a question of, you know, oftentimes to your point, if you're running two, three marketplaces, several different business model here, uh, there's a question of who has the decision, right? Who can make the decision in this situation? And so making sure that you have a single person's name with the decision and that person is, you know, you know, uh, that is really, really important 'cause it gets to clarity real fast. I mean, it's more of a personal rule, but kinda one thing I love to say is, you know, if you had three back and forths of an email, you gotta pick up the phone. And if you've been on the phone for 20 minutes, it's time to just write the, write that decision-maker and go. That way you can make sure (laughs) the concept of an hour you should be able to get a decision. It doesn't always operate like that. I'm sure there's many PMs who, on LinkedIn who are operating who maybe, who may have some feedback for me on that. But that's kinda the intent behind it. And then a five-day alignment is, you know, you should hold your managers, uh, you know, accountable that in five days if someone has something that they haven't been able to escalate and solve, that's probably then on the next level of person. But as you run that ecosystem and there's so much complexity around it, I think you need some of those processes in place in order to start answering some of those, uh, tiebreakers, if you will.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Ooh, I like that five-day rule, basically puts the clock on a manager to get, to unblock basically.
- HSHari Srinivasan
Yeah. Yeah.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
And with Rapid, I don't know if I totally understand. Is that an acronym for something or is it just-
- HSHari Srinivasan
It is. It's, uh...
- LRLenny Rachitsky
... make decisions rapidly?
- HSHari Srinivasan
No, it's a great question. Uh, the D stands for decisions, but the R is for who's recommending it, A, everyone has to agree, the I is for other people who may be of, of able to be putting in an input. And so it's basically a list of people who need to be in the decision chain.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Got it.
- HSHari Srinivasan
I would argue the most important thing is to have a single name on that decision line, because that usually makes sure that you can get a decision very quickly.
- 39:51 – 40:51
What LinkedIn looks for in new hires
- HSHari Srinivasan
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Are there any other really common frameworks or processes along these lines at LinkedIn that you find really helpful?
- HSHari Srinivasan
The third thing is just in how we think about talent, especially in the product organization. And, uh, I, I often really do try to suss out during interviews or, or, you know, in how we promote people, just their ability to see systems. Because I do think it's, again, I do think it's a different skill set and a different capability of how we kinda map those things out on a complexity curve. And so oftentimes I think those talent systems will, those who are able to see the whole make decisions about the whole, that's kinda rare actually. I think most talent systems are, hey, how did your division grow or your product grow, your area grow? And we've tried our best to understand because it's not just about that. I mean, you want accountability in the ecosystem of course, but you know, how, how well does this person work across? And I think as how we've created telemetry around that or organizational understanding of that, how we've understood ourselves kind of just, hey, this is the skillset that's really important here. I think that's quite rare in driving that kind of complex system
- 40:51 – 43:16
The latest innovations at LinkedIn
- HSHari Srinivasan
as well.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
One more question along these lines.
- HSHari Srinivasan
Yeah.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
You've been at LinkedIn for a long time.
- HSHari Srinivasan
Yeah.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
It feels like historically LinkedIn, like as a product team, the external impression was it's very optimizey oriented and everyone there is just micro-optimizing all the little features of LinkedIn. Like everyone I've worked for, with from LinkedIn, they're just really good at just, uh, optimizing things and it feels like a lot of new stuff is happening with LinkedIn these days. And I'm curious if that's been like a real intentional shift of like, let's not focus so much on making emails work better and like all the, you know, click-through rates of everything and more just let's, let's innovate more. Let's do some bigger bets.
- HSHari Srinivasan
I do think there's two things that, to kinda acknowledge. First, it's an incredible growth team and I think a lot of people that go on from LinkedIn in incredible roles are growth. So I think there's an influencer chain that's, you know, a lot of people you meet might be growth oriented. The second thing is, especially when LinkedIn started, I, and I, you know, like you said, I've been here (laughs) a little bit of time, but growing the network is probably a very, very important thing to get the scale out. So I think a lot of things people interacted with at first were maybe more growth mechanisms than-
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm-hmm.
- HSHari Srinivasan
... than other systems. I do think there's always been, at least for the last, you know, last several years, an underlining line that values what's gonna carry this ecosystem and values ultimately what, what makes the day. And to your point, I like to think that, you know, they, they may not be the most, I don't know, the glittery items, right? But I'm really proud of what we've done with skills. I think that's like one of those invisible systems that no one really knows. Like, oh my gosh, that's a huge disruption if people can now get, can... That's a huge language that people have created. That's a huge way that people have changed. Really proud of what we've done with kinda values, even open to work and commitments. These are major social systems that we've kinda wired through. I'm really proud of what we've done with LinkedIn Learning. I would argue it's one of the bigger creator systems in the world. It's these incredible instructors and the ability to take someone who teaches, maybe is not great kind of on camera and move 'em to Studio and give 'em that capability and, and take their voice out there.And I think there's a lot of different things we've done that maybe because they're more invisible, if you will, or they're hidden in a marketplace that necessarily, you know, may- maybe the, uh, a lot of the influencer voices may not actually need an access every day, I, I don't know if they get as much visibility. But I like to think that's been part of the DNA for a while and we've been really thinking
- 43:16 – 45:00
LinkedIn Learning
- HSHari Srinivasan
through it.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Let's actually talk about LinkedIn Learning.
- HSHari Srinivasan
Sure.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
So I know this is a big passion of yours. You have your own course within this that I wanna talk about. But broadly just, what is LinkedIn Learning, just so people understand? 'Cause I don't know if a lot of people know this exists within LinkedIn.
- HSHari Srinivasan
Great question. LinkedIn Learning is, is basically a way to learn professional skills. And so we entered the business in 2015, and the thesis was it's kind of we think about as a marketplace again, you have seekers and job. And oftentimes seekers may not have all the skills in order to get the job. We had this long kind of... We're moving now towards the skills model, but without question, you know, this 2nd order impact, I don't think any of us wanted to kind of, if you will, like, Uber-ize the world. Like I don't think any of us wanted to make it and were there, we wanted to make sure everyone had the skills in order to learn the skills in order to get there. And so, uh, getting the learning business is really, really important for the vision and the mission, and basically the idea was that we'd have ways to teach people skills that was very much tailored to professionals. Now, that was kind of the vision. The way the mechanism works is we go and get the best instructors in the world. We will bring them into a film studio or we'll do it at home or in a way that makes the content extremely... We help write the scripts, we obviously have incredible graphics artists, uh, in a way that makes a teacher and someone who's an expert who may not always have the capability in the sense that, or the time to go and make their own online course and, and get them in the studio and go from there. And then the vast majority of people will probably have access through, through their company. Uh, the vast majority of the usage and, and kind of the business runs through enterprise and is a, a large enterprise learning product.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Awesome. Like, um, just as a quarter, uh, I don't know, armchair quarterback strategy person, I could see where this came from of we're trying to help people connect to economic opportunity, find jobs. How do we help them? Oh, they don't have the skill. Let's help them build the skills. Makes a lot of sense.
- 45:00 – 48:19
Hari’s product management course
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Okay, and so within this you have your own course on product management.
- HSHari Srinivasan
Well, it's funny. So I mean, o- open it up, I'd, I'd been thinking about a course for a while, but largely it was, you know, it was this concept of I wanted to make sure I tried our own product and I understood the instructor pain point. Uh, but it's a very scary experience. (laughs) You know, it's like first, I don't know if I had anything to teach, you know, my own concerns about that. But about four or five years ago, one of the things we started at PM, uh, in- internally was Product University. We had our own internal university, which was basically we got some survey, like we sent it out and I think, uh, everyone told us well, you know, like, it's like literally like the most negative one was we didn't, people said, "I don't have the skills to do my job." And I remember looking around and being like, "Well, it's pretty obvious. We hired a bunch of people, there's no PM degree and we've done nothing."
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm-hmm.
- HSHari Srinivasan
And so what we started doing is internally creating a Product University. It was a boot camp coming in. You know, we, we try to come from different models and one of the things we really learned was you can't teach this just through frameworks, right? You needed to have a series of case studies, need to have a real series of examples. But luckily, we had a bunch of things we'd done on LinkedIn. So we started putting a curriculum against that. And then just recently, uh, a few of us got together and we filmed the actual course for it. So it's basically taking our Product University boot camp and kind of opening it up to the world.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
And you opened up some of your internal use cases as a part of this course?
- HSHari Srinivasan
We do, yeah.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
That's awesome. I always say that one of the things you don't realize you have as an advantage working at a bigger company is access to tons of strategy documents and vision documents and like stories of this, 'cause once you're out, no one's gonna be able to share those with you 'cause they're so private. Like I don't have access to any of these anymore. So that's a really cool perk of working at a company like LinkedIn.
- HSHari Srinivasan
Thanks. Yeah.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Question about your course. What are some of your biggest lessons that you teach? Can you just give me a preview of some of the tidbits that you might-
- HSHari Srinivasan
Yeah.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
... learn in this course of yours?
- HSHari Srinivasan
Well again, a lot of it is case studies and use cases in, in the same way we teach it here. But a couple things that we do talk through. You know, one, when we started doing the, kind of our own Product University, we realized that a couple big pain points that people had. The first was it's actually really hard to know how to validate and what the bar is for a new idea in any organization. I think it's really hard to kinda say that. So we provide a lot of frameworks, uh, kind of simple things from hey, you know, you gotta prove to, to the world why there's, there's duct tape in here, right? There's someone actually physically going out and trying to do it. How you can prioritize a list of ideas against a pain point, like how to kind of make a simple expression and how to kind of look through, you know, what's an acute pain point and what's a wide range that people use. How we'd expect data in order to be used in order to validate this. So kind of tools you could use to kind of say if this is a good idea or a bad idea, or more importantly tools to make sure you went through the process on how you communicate it. That's kind of one framework set that we kind of talk through. The other is, you know, a lot about, uh, Damian, who leads our growth team, comes in and he starts talking a lot about leading, uh, uh, kind of thinking in loops. And so how do you make sure that when you're building something you can have the fuel in order to cascade and grow? And I think just the framework of doing that, how you measure that, how you monitor that is also something that, at least when I was starting and doing my startup, it was, it was quite, uh, something I wish I'd had access to. (laughs) And so, uh, tho- those are maybe two good examples of frameworks and tools that we come through. And then of course trying to overlay that with real cases, not always successful ones of course too. We talk about a lot of the failures we've had and where we probably went wrong if we have to dia- diagnose them postmortem.
- 48:19 – 50:40
Advice for people hoping to get into product management
- HSHari Srinivasan
- LRLenny Rachitsky
A lot of the people listening to this are people that want to get into product management and aren't PMs yet. I imagine you get asked this a lot. How do I get into product management? What is your advice that you often give?
- HSHari Srinivasan
Yeah. Well, l- let's start with, uh, kind of how we looked at the world, which is, you know, this idea of skills. You know, we had a, kind of we have a diagram that I think about which is skills are kind of on a triangle. You might have heard this one before. I don't know if you have.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm-hmm. No.
- HSHari Srinivasan
Skills are on a triangle and I think you need three different skills to be a great PM. You need to be kind of a Steven Spielberg type creator. You, something around data science and, and the ability to really look at data and see patterns in it and kind of see the future. And then, you know, especially as you get more senior, could I think it's a lot of general management, right? You have to basically be able to show that innovative across the team, understand how the budget works, understand how companies
- NANarrator
Beep.
- HSHari Srinivasan
I've actually never seen a great PM who's in the center of it. I find that great PMs live on the edges. Like there's a, you know, there's always someone who's, like this exceptional data scientist and the ability to maybe be a great GM and lead inspire. Or, or maybe someone who's so creative who can, you know, lead a team in a different way. And, and I think that one thing I would really, really encourage people to do is understand where they fit on that graph and gravitate towards those kinds of roles. Because a lot of times I think what people do is they think they have to make up for the other pieces of that graph, and, and it leads them to a path where maybe they're not playing to their strengths. That's, uh, one thing I always encourage people. The other thing I would say, and I, I, I know it's a little bit of luck in how this works, but I think about my journey. One thing I've really found was really helpful is I, I was lucky to have ... I was on the first team that did a hybrid kind of SUV in, in, in the US. It was, at the time it was, it was the hybrid Escape at Ford, and I, I came from the Midwest and it was a, you know, one of those products where people would really drive out for hundreds of miles and see and, and really kind of a community kind of gravitate around, 'cause it was a very special product. And being able to work on something that people loved, like really loved early on, and see what that felt like and looked like and that success was, it kind of created a bar for what I would hope my products could do, right? It would ... And, and if you're able to get into something that people really love and feel that and experience that and really understand what that looks like and what it takes to get there, I think that's actually been a really valuable lesson throughout my career, 'cause you can understand the whole path on the way up. And I look back at that as really something that I, I, I would hope, uh, other people if they can do it, I know you're making real decisions on many different criteria, but try to find something people love and, and really experience what that feels like.
- 50:40 – 51:57
How to level up your PM skills
- HSHari Srinivasan
- LRLenny Rachitsky
To kind of build on that. With PMs that work for you and work with you, when they're looking to get better and build their skills, other than, you know, go take some courses on LinkedIn Learning, what do you often recommend they do to help become stronger and better at their job?
- HSHari Srinivasan
So first, it is that feeling of you gotta own your product and you gotta speak up and say, "This is where I want to drive it." Because a lot of times I think people are, are scared to do that or worried about doing that or don't feel that's their actual role. So one, it's like extreme clarity on, "Hey, this is your role is to own this and take this to the next level." And you know, when, when you start kind of molding the clay, people wanna come and help. When you start building something cool, people are like, "Oh," you did kind of gravitate into it. But until you can start doing that, that's really tough. So one, it's letting people know that's kind of what's expected then. And then two, I would tell people to just build. As crazy as it sounds, like, I spent a lot of my time kind of on the side just trying to build different things, try, I mean, they try different clay, think through different ideas. And I think that is a really important skill to have to just being able to say, "Okay, I'm gonna start with the blank sheet and make some art," or whatever it is you want to do. And I encourage people to do that, 'cause it's a muscle like anything else, right? You can get, um, kenatrophy, and I really do think no matter what pe- kind of the heart of PM it is that ability to be a builder and you do have to make sure you can keep doing it.
- 51:57 – 55:02
Hari’s creative side projects
- HSHari Srinivasan
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Yeah, that's actually a great segue to where I was gonna go next, which is, you say you build and you like to build stuff, but you're like legitimately building a lot of stuff.
- HSHari Srinivasan
Yeah. (laughs)
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Uh, so you have this site, mindofhari.com.
- HSHari Srinivasan
Yeah.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Where you share all these side projects. So can you just talk about what's going on there and some of the stuff-
- HSHari Srinivasan
Yeah.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
... that you've built?
- HSHari Srinivasan
You know, I've, uh, arguably the only thing I've ever been good at in my life is just building things and creating things, and I, I get a lot of energy from it. And, uh, yeah. I, I, I have a site, it's called Mind of Hari, 'cause it is really whatever's top of mind. I try to do my best to completely separate it from business. I know there's always a draw as a good PM to kind of say, "Is there a business here?" But I try to keep it as art, just, you know, like it's completely art and it's what I want to build. And I take on new subjects and I have two little kids and, you know, it's, uh, it, it's fun to kind of, one of 'em was a, a book me and my oldest wrote, and it was kind of a set of bedtime stories we did. And then one day I was like, "Hey, we should just make this a notebook." And we did it. I think it's got about half a million readers now. So it's, uh, you know-
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Hmm.
- HSHari Srinivasan
... it's, it's, uh, it's, it's, it's been fun to kind of see it, you know, take some life and go through. We made a board game recently that I know Stanford Design School or some professors there have been using, and it was called Parallel Universe. And it's how do you kind of, kind of have a card and then be able to see like, you know, maybe the card says, "There's no windows in this world anymore." And then what would happen in that world? And you gotta list 10 different things that would happen. So kind of that, that ability to kind of think ahead and, and, and, and kind of a fun sci-fi. So I, I make kind of healthy gummy bears. I just try to take something completely new and have that, I don't know, it's probably one of the more fun moments in this world where you can sit there and just create something and have some new clay, and, uh, yeah. It's, it's a... (laughs) That, that is what that website is about.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Wait, so you made actual gummy bears?
- HSHari Srinivasan
Yeah, we are doing some, uh, with gummy bears. So, Lenny, I know you're expecting a new addition, but congratulations again.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Okay.
- HSHari Srinivasan
But one of the things I found when I had kids is no matter what I was trying to do, there was like candy and sugar everywhere, like any Halloween, any birthday party, et cetera. So I wanted to s- create ... You can't get rid of it 'cause like, you know, it was just hard to do. So I, you know, we were like, "Hey, we're gonna sit down and make our own gummy bear." What I found is, this is just a fun tidbit for your readers. If you open like a Twizzler or one of those, about 80% of what's in there is sugar, because they're optimizing for shelf life, right? They're optimizing for what's in the store.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm-hmm.
- HSHari Srinivasan
And so what we are able to do is basically create a gummy bear, about 40% of it's sugar, and it's just got five ingredients. Honey is the sweetener, because it's, I don't wanna give my kids some alternative sweeteners. But yeah, we have a, uh, a small commercial kitchen and we produce some gummy bears and, uh, if you ever wanna try 'em to any of my (laughs) , to any of your followers, I'm happy to send some gummy bears and hopefully you can, uh, you can check 'em out.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Wait, how do people ... Is there a way to buy them somewhere?
- HSHari Srinivasan
We can go to Mind of Hari. We, we stock 'em seasonally and there is, uh, uh, one of the things that, uh, we found out is there is different kind of laws on, on how, um-
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Oh, no.
- HSHari Srinivasan
... food can be shipped, and, and obviously we're not optimizing for long storage. So, uh, but they'll be on Mind of Hari and you can always reach out to me and I'll find you and tell you where, where, which farmer's market we're at or whatever, and you can come swing by.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Well, I don't see it on Mind of Hari, so maybe by the time this comes out put it on here, or if you're trying to-
- HSHari Srinivasan
Put it on there.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Yeah.
- HSHari Srinivasan
Yeah, it's under ... It's on the homepage and then when they're stock, we put 'em in the shop.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Okay, so that means-
- HSHari Srinivasan
Yeah.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
... they're out of stock. All right. We're gonna sell you out. Let's get all your gummy bears.
- 55:02 – 1:02:34
Lightning round
- LRLenny Rachitsky
With that, we've reached our very exciting lightning round. Uh, are you ready?
- HSHari Srinivasan
Yeah, let's do it.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
What are two or three books you've recommended most to other people?
- HSHari Srinivasan
The first one is called Thinking in Systems. It's the one I give kind of the team every now and then. It, it's just a, yeah, it's just a really good book about how... I think a lot of people see sys- systems or, you know, we kind of talk about, and it can be abstract. I think it goes into real detail on how people can, you know, intervene at various parts and how to take actions at different systems. I really enjoyed that book. Not directly maybe a book I recommend, but a book that I just read that I thought was phenomenal just to give if readers want something good is called Tomorrow, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow. It was recommended by a friend. Have you read it? You're, you're smiling.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
I read it, yeah.
- HSHari Srinivasan
Oh.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
I honestly didn't love it, but I, I liked it a lot.
- HSHari Srinivasan
Ah. I really, I, I for some reason-
- LRLenny Rachitsky
It's very sweet.
- HSHari Srinivasan
... I thought it was very well done and, uh, there's a couple chapters I reflected on. I just finished it.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm.
- HSHari Srinivasan
And I thought it was, I thought it was well done. So that's one that I'll throw out there.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Yeah. It was very sweet. I feel like it got, it got hyped too much for me and I'm like, "Okay."
- HSHari Srinivasan
Oh, I didn't know it, I didn't actually know it got, uh-
- LRLenny Rachitsky
I think that's the key.
- HSHari Srinivasan
... much publicity. Okay. That's it. The third one that I just downloaded 'cause I finished, I'm actually gonna open up my, uh, my audio book and tell you because I'm about, I don't know, an hour into it and I'm really enjoying it. It is An Immense World. I don't know if you read that one yet.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Yeah.
- HSHari Srinivasan
Uh, it is about animals and how animals have different senses out there and it goes kind of through a set of different animals like and, and kind of how they see the world and just one of those reminders that, you know, we're, we're so limited sometimes in our own perception than kind of how dogs for instance, they, you know, they can, uh, breathe in and take in scents even when they're breathing out. And so they're constantly... It's like vision almost, and it's just phenomenal to me to just kinda think about all of the things they're probably sensing as we're going on, my dog and I are going on our walk.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
I've learned dogs like shoot air out of their nose first before they smell it to kind of clear things out.
- HSHari Srinivasan
It's, uh... They're-
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Wow.
- HSHari Srinivasan
I mean, isn't that wild? They kind of, they can probably see so much more of what happened in the history of like a-
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Yeah.
- HSHari Srinivasan
... little walk than we're able to just because of that.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Incredible. Next question. What is a favorite recent movie or TV show?
- HSHari Srinivasan
Well, so one thing we try to do is watch TV as a family. It kinda brings us together a little bit. So we, uh, we are doing Star Wars with the kids, which is for the first time, which has been a really enjoyable-
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Oh.
- HSHari Srinivasan
... experience just being able to witness it through them. And then we've been going a little bit back in time. So we watched E.T. which is, you know, we kind of... It's fun. It jogs your memory. These are phenomenal movies that we go through. I think your question is on recent TV shows that probably came out more recently.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Those work just as well.
- HSHari Srinivasan
Uh, yeah. I, um, the other one I did like, I, it's not a TV show, but I, um, um, god what was it called? Case- it was, it was that podcast that came out, Case 63 I think it was called?
Episode duration: 1:04:47
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