are you practically trying to challenge your own assumptions it's extremely important right as a beginner product manager as well as a seasoned product leader if you're not doing enough of that then I think you might not be listening if there's no conflict if there's no contention then something is missing 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 shweta srivastava shweta is senior director of product management at waymo which if you're not familiar with waymo they are building self-driving cars that are already live
on the streets in San Francisco LA and Phoenix actually got to take a ride in one ahead of this chat and you'll hear all about that in this episode before joining waymo shweta was Chief product officer at naoto and AI started focusing on driver automation safety before that she was head of product management at
Amazon web services for their database and analytics services and before that she was at Cisco in our conversation we delve into what it's like to work as a PM at waymo and how it's both different and similar to software only products we talk about their kpis and goals at waymo including how they track progress towards a future of self-driving cars
how they build subtle cues and behaviors into the cars to create trust for the rider and also for other cars on the road plus drives as biggest lessons about building products and teams across the many companies she's worked at I can't wait for a future of every car being self-driving and it was super fun to learn about what goes into making
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earn 4.8 percent a higher yield than a high yield account only with a treasury account at public.com Lenny schwetza welcome to the podcast thank you great to be here it's great to have you I thought we'd start with just a little bit about what it is you do at waymo today uh what are you and your teams responsible for at waymo yeah if
my team's uh responsible for three key areas I would say one is um building a big part of the software that actually runs on board the fully autonomous vehicle and that determines the actual behavior and trajectory of the vehicle uh secondly building the simulation tools and technologies that are required to
validate the performance of the system and then the third one of the teams focused on commercially scaling our ride-haining business which is one of our key go-to-market applications for the technology we're building so as you know you uh arranged a ride for me on in a waymo in San Francisco it was actually a really rainy day and uh it was quite
mind-blowing I've never been in a self-driving car that had no driver sitting in the front like I have a Tesla and I turn on self-driving sometimes but I've never experienced just sitting the back and this thing just rides you around also just like a memory hat is like the app to call the waymo is like it feels like Google Maps except instead
of just telling you how to get to a place like a car shows up and just takes you there and then you could change course as you're driving and it's uh it's crazy how quickly it became normal I'm just like all right we're just riding around San Francisco on this self-driving car and just sitting in the back and telling you where to go and so
so anyway I'm gonna ask you a bunch of questions around this but I guess thank you for arranging that ride that was uh quite special no I I'm glad that you were able to do that and on a rainy day so that's a special bonus because again you know the the technology has been performing very well which has been very
hard for me for us to see so a few questions along these lines one thing that I noticed that was really cool is we're trying to turn into a lane and there's cars coming in that lane just like continuing to move and the car just kind of like subtly was like inching its way out communicating through this like interesting body language thing of just
like hey I want to can someone let me in and yeah it's interesting there's no eye contact involved and it's just like this I don't know gesture that you all have to develop and so I guess the question here is just like what what have you all learned and what I I don't know if you even work on that piece of it but just I'm curious how you think about creating
this like body language of the car communication system to help people understand what it's trying to do we're using a lot of human driving data to train our deep learn models so it's important to make sure that the behavioral car doesn't seem robotic right it can feel quite unnatural and you know from the get-go we focused on
building affiliate hand system so it's important to have that familiarity that trust uh you know building with the writers where they they're not daunted by technology they don't feel like they're sitting in a robot right it has to feel very human-like but in a good way right making making making it safer
than human driving but then not making it feel unnatural and so we have uh you know deep learned models that can understand what the other Road users intent is so stuff like you know which way The Pedestrian is looking right or what is their body orientation because that could tell you you know what which way then they're headed then the road
signs or the gestures right somebody is trying to stop the the vehicle the the system can understand all those signals so because we're using uh deep learning models uh trained on human driving but again sort of uh in a good way right we discard the bad human driving data uh we can mimic human driving behavior in a good way and that's why you saw the
behavior that you saw yesterday now one thing to note is uh we can't also just completely rely on explicit gestures and signs right because a lot of driving is also social norms right it's uh if you if you're in a particular you know section in San Francisco you know maybe it's okay for pedestrians to cross even
when they don't have a walk sign right another city another intersection might have a different social Norm when it comes to pedestrians Crossing the the four-way stop sign or the crosswalk or what have you yeah and so the car also has to learn about those social norms and be able to react to it so it's it's it's uh like I said you know it's uh we
don't realize how sophisticated how interactive uh and how social driving really is and with our artificial intelligence capabilities you know being able to incorporate a lot of that into our system Behavior so before waymo you worked at non-self-driving uh software companies worked at Amazon Cisco a few other
companies I'm curious what you've found to be the biggest difference working in a company like waymo versus a traditional software company anyway as I said earlier you know it's a highly complex uh technically complex system that we have built in and and we're improving and and it's it's if I may see so it's the most game changing product that
anybody would ever work on I don't know Amazon's pretty cool but I I totally catch yeah I break that Amazon I'm a fan right um and they have been pretty transformational with AWS and and on the e-commerce site but a fully autonomous driving system you know you it's yeah it's also a very very hard problem right so it it's it's transformational from that
perspective too I would say that the pmcr have to go have to be able to go technically indeed uh compared to what um the what they would do in a in other you know software products uh they have to be able to get into the details as much as needed they have to be okay with uncertainty and ambiguity again you know
I think that is part and parcel of any product management role but it's it's even more so here right this is a long agreement so you have to have that tenacity to play the long game and and be continuously improving the product and and make this thing a broad reality right uh in future so those are some of the attributes I would also say that um
there is some some level of self-selection here you know you have to be driven by the mission to make the road safer right uh we have about 1.35 million deaths that happen every year across the world from traffic accidents and most of that is attributable to driving errors and Driver distraction right and I'm sure I've been guilty of
you know being on on checking my text messages while driving up I've seen other drivers do that right with affiliate harmless technology you know you don't have that risk that's the risk we're trying to minimize so they have to be driven by that mission one other thing is that the concept of MVP right which is so widely popular in the SAS
product management world or product management World in general has a whole new meaning here at bibo when you work on product like this because um safety is is you know on top of mind for all of us right and can't really cut corners on safety there's no you know uh there's there's the MVP bar itself for safety is extremely high for us
right so the core product management philosophy of sort of you know getting an MVP out there and then iterating with uh the real world deployment it it applies but it's it's just a different uh it's a different bar on that mvp touching again on uh safety and like human behavior I was thinking a little bit as you were chatting about uh cyber
Tesla which has self-driving car self-driving capabilities and intellectually I know it's probably going to drive a lot better than I am but I still feel like I need to like disengage it occasionally when I'm like on a curvy Road I'm just like I don't know about this I don't want to like leave room for error if there's something that weird that happens
and I imagine someone designing product for that weird Behavior we're like I should probably trust it because I'm probably a lot better driver than I am but I don't know I feel like I can do a better job is there anything you've learned about I don't know human behavior or how to design software for these sorts of experiences
that uh maybe surprised you or is that or thought was really interesting or that was really important since you mentioned test I you know I just want to clarify that it's um it's a different system that we're building right which is for way more we started by solving the problem of fully autonomous driving without a human
driver at the wheel from the get-go right it's not a driver assist or Adas system which relies on the human driver taking over when there's a complex situation right so I think that expectation is built into that kind of a product right and and so the human uh you know the folks who are using that product would also uh have that mindset
that hey I should be ready to take over when the situation demands because we built the system from the get-go uh to to work in a fully autonomous mode without a human driver intervention rate at the wheel we had to integrate this into our design Philosophy from the very beginning that it this has to feel incredible predictable and the writers
have to be able to trust the system right so that has been sort of the core of the design philosophy and so what happens is and I heard this from you as well which resonated with me and I've heard this from a lot of our writers that they feel you know it's like for the first five minutes of the ride it's wow you know is this thing really
happening right but then it starts to feel very natural uh and and you know as if this is how it was always meant to be right after the first one it's like uh uneventful that's exactly how it's supposed to feel but it's not a happenstance that it feels that way you know the the the the naturalness the smoothness uh and and
still sort of you know adhering to safety at all times are things that are designed into the system and then we make sure that the writer has visibility into what's happening the if they're not bearing the seat belt the writer support would call them right so then they know okay there's a human that they can reach out to if they if they have an issue
they can look at the monitor in the in the car right to understand what the car is seeing so I think all these little things uh help develop that trust in the system on that same note what's one thing that you've your teams have built that creates a lot of trust or maybe it was a surprisingly important element in
creating trust in the experience like in terms of the product especially and I don't know either the app or the in uh in car experience I don't know if I can point to one thing you know it is again it's this is such a holistic experience then I think it has to be a bunch of small things to make it feel you know natural transparent and trustworthy to
the writers and I can give you one example that I don't think I've mentioned in in the discussion so far so again because the the system is designed to be you know cautious and defensive but still making you know adequate progress in the absence of traffic right it will never go up above the speed limit right it doesn't go about the
speed limit it sticks or adheres to the speed limit was something that a lot of our writers actually appreciate about the system now it turns out that adhering to the speed limit even without traffic sometimes is is not the best thing you have to go below the speed limit and we realize that for driving in the in sort of the slopes or the the
gradients uh you know the street with inclines in in San Francisco there are many of those right the human brain is trained to other human drivers are sort of you know subconsciously they slow down when they go downhill yeah those looks right the autonomous vehicle doesn't necessarily have to do that right if it's safe and if it's staying below the
speed limit but but we learned that this is this is the this is a more natural Driving Experience right and this is what our writers would also expect in terms of the experience so that's something that that we uh then you know modify the behavior on that makes sense I would I would want it to slow down on the other
hand if I feel like I could trust that I could I wish there was a button to just like crazy mode just go go for it kind of digging a little bit into the product team's way of working what are kpis that you all use to track progress I don't know either amongst some of the teams you lead or also just broadly progress on self-driving technology how
do you know you're making progress is it just like miles driven or something else there are tons of these metrics right that we um analyze on on sort of a daily basis weekly basis depending upon what uh what the metric is but if I were to categorize them sort of two broad categories that be the commercial and operational metrics in the system
Behavior metrics right so one thing one important thing to note here is that it's not this is we're not in a proof of concept or a pilot phase anymore right this is the service that we are offering to writers uh you know paid service in Phoenix and uh also it's open to public in San Francisco right so it's an actual
service and so we tracking you know the the commercial metrics in terms of the trips per week right the daily or weekly active users and all the funnel metrics that you can think of also the operational metrics right the cost right well how much does this thing uh costing us to upgrade so that's I would say all the stuff on the the on the commercial
scaling side and then on the on the driver performance the driver vemo drivers the is the technology name as as I alluded yeah the driver performance metrics you know bass man across uh safety the you know compliance to the road rules our our ability to make adequate progress as in you know not get unduly stopped or stranded in dense
traffic situations as an example what are just like specific metrics there like anything you could share just like what is the actual goal on one of those teams the goal here is to be able to drive safer than uh than humans right now it's we don't really have one standard human driving Benchmark right safety Benchmark that
um everybody uses right but we do gather um enough of that data right we have access to enough of that data to form an opinion on our our metric on a benchmark on what does human driving look like you know how many collisions as an example uh human driver would have every 100 000 Mile right and then we want to make sure
that our performance is better than that right so that's I'm simplifying right and several things go into sort of both calculating The Benchmark as well as our performance against that Benchmark but that at the core of it you know that's what we're trying to do so that's on the safety side and then I would say on the uh the tops and strandings which is trying
to you know which goes in the different direction hey you can be very safe if you're not moving at all that's one problem right we we need to make sure that the writers get to their destination on time so it has to be making it has to be appropriately assertive and be making the right progress and so again how
how much did the vehicle slow down unduly right or in how many instances in a given week uh did it have to rely on sort of a rescue help right those are the situations that we want to avoid and then what how much did we slow down the traffic for other Road users right so we again do extensive benchmarking and uh look at the priors Etc and really
understand what would an adequate performance be there and measure our own uh against that awesome today's episode is brought to you by element I just recently discovered the stuff actually from another podcast and it is such sweet salty goodness element is a tasty electrolyte drink mix with a science-backed electrolyte ratio and
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lmnt.com Lenny and you'll get a free sample pack with any purchase which includes one packet of every flavor my favorite is watermelon salt you won't find this offer publicly available so you have to head to drinklmnt.com Lenny to take advantage of this offer stay salty I'm guessing your academic answer to when do we think we'll have fully
self-driving level 5 autonomy so uh let me ask you a different approach to that question of just what's getting what's most in the way of us getting to full self-driving where we don't have to do anything ever is it like miles driven is it like Tech breakthroughs that still have to happen is it regulation and just
cities being like okay it's fine what's the biggest blocker at this point or bottleneck so then let me uh share my opinion on the M5 right so I think so L4 for you know for those who might not be very familiar with this term you know m2l3 is still very much driver assist you know there it gets to some level of autonomy but then relies on the human
driver at the wheel to be able to take over in Conflict situations L4 is fully autonomous without a human driver at the wheel and no expectation of a human driver at the wheel that's what we've been focusing on L5 would be in any kind of road right completely unstructured off-roading uh in that kind of an environment be able to drive
without you know without any map without any priors what have you and we believe that you know by offering the kind of service that we are offering in Phoenix and San Francisco and then you know in the through the rest of this year and other cities in future is it helps realize that um the the dream of the fully autonomous
driving in a big way right without having to go to L5 so I think that in the technology is already there you know L5 I'm not sure you know maybe that becomes more Niche Etc it solves very specific use cases in terms of the blocker I would say the technology is there but it still needs improvements especially you know we were not able to
drive in snow yet right something that we have to tackle in future I could barely Drive in slow okay yeah and I I don't like to drive in snow even double I avoid on Race nowadays but yeah you know that is something that we still have to build as a capability in riding strong and snow fine now so so that's great makes sense clearly there's
a lot of little things a lot of little things a lot of big things and it's a really interesting point about like we don't need all five all fours great for most people maybe a last question along this track and then I want to Pivot to a different area so waymo's been this long-term investment for alphabet and many PMS
often try to create buy-in and keep buying for a large investment a large project I know this like a different scale of investment than what most PMS work through but is there anything you've learned about keeping leaders bought in and excited and continuing to invest in a project uh for years and years and specifically just like tactics
that keep people excited and bought into a long-term investment yeah so first of all we are fortunate that we have uh the backing from alphabet and and other investors and um you know the autonomous vehicle industry is interesting and I think the last year has been interesting with more consolidation happening right so I think the name of the game here is
to uh is is to show progress right show meaningful progress and meaningful progress not just in terms of Technology but in terms of commercial deployments right that is that is the the rubber meets the road if you will face off of the of the product and the results have to speak for themselves for our investors to have the confidence in us
right so notwithstanding uh you know what's happening to other a b companies in the uh in the industry you know it's about what we are doing and they look at the progress that we've been making and where we are headed and the fact that we've been sort of um accelerating our milestones and blowing through our own
expectations I think these are very positive uh signals to our investors as well and we've been you know another startup as well it's not about you have to do what's the right thing for the business right that's what you put your focus is on creating value for the customers creating value for the writers right you you have to build a business
that makes sense and you know and the investors see that too right we're not going to do something unnatural or uh something that you know doesn't align with the business goals in order to gain any short-term brownie points with the investors if it doesn't work that way and the investors will see through that too uh definitely alphabets you know uh
has been our backer for forever right so it's really about focusing on doing the building the right business and doing the right thing for the for the users I think that's a great takeaway that if you're finding that there isn't buy-in and continued support for what you're building uh focus on momentum and showing success like it's
pretty simple if you think about it and it's hard to cut something that's just like showing success yeah and uh and so even at the scale of away modes uh it's a great lesson so that makes sense we talked a bit about other companies you've worked at and so I want to kind of zoom out a little bit and I just want
to ask you worked at Amazon Cisco waymo now startup you mentioned what are just some of the biggest lessons you've learned about successfully of building successful teams and successful products in terms of the product whether you're working for you know a big company or a startup the core product management tenant's still the same which is you
know you have to work backwards from the customer problem or the user problem right uh building a technology for the sake of it is you know it doesn't really go that far right so you really have to focus on the what are you building who are you building it for and what problem are you solving right and that this applies in any
context right Amazon has this um great process where the PMS have to write uh a press release for the finished product even before they start building the product right that's the thing that's the first thing that they have to do is to write their press release like the products about to launch today right what are you telling the users about
that product really forces them to think about the the value proposition more thoroughly right and and I know many other companies are starting to sort of look at that practice as well but I found it very effective you do that do you do that way more would you folks do that is there kind of a system there in the explicit PR FAQ process that Amazon
follows is uh you know I think Bemo has its own version of it but it is about sort of focusing on on the on the customer problem now vemo is also a very different kind of product right it's highly integrated uh so in 10 different types of product management flavors if you will write some are more technically focused and technically deep some more
commercially focused um so they all adapt they have their versions of working backwards from the customer problem but that still Remains The Core tenet in my mind the other uh you know big lessons at least working in so the large companies that I have had is uh it's also very important to know what you're not building right and this one
is not as big companies I would say even in startup it's extremely important to know you know what you're not willing because you could very easily get swayed by customer X telling you to do this customer why telling you to do that and a product that tries to be all thanks to all people you know usually doesn't end up going
anywhere so that Focus that prioritization and being crisp about what you're building and what you're not building is is very important and then in the context of the large companies what I was going to say was um you know I think it's the is the classic innovators dilemma right the large companies tend to be
the market share leaders in in their focus areas and so the product team and the product leaders can get very incremental in their product strategy and and then low and visual you know and see an upstart that comes and disrupts them right and and so I have definitely learned the lesson that you need to disrupt yourself before somebody else
does right because it's gonna happen it's inevitable in large companies that are constantly sort of you know challenging themselves and disrupting their uh their own models right or their own product capabilities to produce even something more transformational for for the customers or the ones that that really succeed and I think this is where
the product leaders have to bring in that mindsettle okay you know are we getting two completes into or it's time to just that's such a good reminder is there example of you doing that or something you worked on where you had where you got the company to commit to something that maybe could have been a threat from a disruptor or maybe even
just seen that happening at a company just like is there a specific project or investment that comes to mind and Amazon I launched or I was the first um pm and then I go the team around it uh for a no code application development platform called honeycode right so that was a brand new service Amazon had never
delved in that space before it was more sort of more infrastructure focused and uh anyone as well sort of first of its kind uh service that that the team worked on so and this has played out many times in my career and so I am a big believer in disrupting yourself before somebody else does it what do you think is the most underrated PM skill
that you suggest people maybe especially early in their career that they should focus on maybe that they're probably not thinking about I think the the listening and uh and empathy are are the top ones these are very important because I think I think when folks think about product management you want to think about sort
of the influencing without Authority and and prioritization and being able to write with pre Etc right all those things um are sort of more top of mind the listening and empathy I wouldn't say that they are underrated I think there is there is now a lot more recognition that these are sort of core skills if you want to be able to influence a lot
without Authority uh but I but I think it's easier said than done you know you really have to come in with that growth mindset that you know with that beginner's mindset be able to absorb and just learn and listen and don't jump in with ideas necessarily right being take the time to formulate that opinion but really learn and understand the
customer in the market and really be true to that tenant of working backwards from the customer problem not just you know save because it's it's become such a platitude now in the in the product world yeah there's a book there's a whole book called working backwards now yeah yeah that's true that is the one thing that I would say that that
somebody uh who's starting out as a product manager you know really try to follow that principle and then listening and empathy is going to go a long way in terms of being able to leave that on listening and empathy what do you think helped you most develop those two skills so I think for me part of it was just doing this over and over
again in different environments right in different product launches that I have led in different types of companies that I've worked with in startup as well as big company right the dynamic is different right and and again the um you know the the team that you're working with in different companies have different culture uh so when you're
working with let's say an engineering leader uh you know being able to understand what are his or her constraints right where is he or she coming from what what does impact look like to that person and then understanding and then understanding where you're aligned where you're not aligned or things that you have to develop and start paying a lot more
attention to as you sort of rise in your career or go up the ladder uh and I think a lot of that for me came um came by just being in different kind of situations and different kind of environments yeah that's what I often say also like a lot of this just comes from doing it again and again and again there's not going to take a course and
then just I'm a great listener I'm done yeah it's uh yeah yeah which is not easy to like you know it'd be nice if there's a book you read and then you become a great listener I think one one take or one one that I could hmm you know share is is just challenging your own assumptions right so so I think listening with an
open mind but then you know are you practically trying to challenge your own assumptions uh it's extremely important right as a beginner product manager as well as a seasoned product leader you have to if you're not doing enough of that then I think you might not be listening well right or you might not be picking on sort of the the cues then you're just
if there's no conflict if there's no contention then something is missing it's not often you're going to be always right yeah maybe one more question along these lines you've been promoted many times now you're in a place where you promote people and I'm curious for someone that may be wants to get promoted or struggling to
get promoted what would you say or probably the reasons they aren't or what do you think people should focus on if they want to just get a promotion and many promotions in their career say something that might sound a little uh cheeky right but I think the way to get promoted is to not want it too badly right it is about you have to focus on
on sort of the the impact right it is it's about having an impact and then doing what is right for the business so so not sort of you know optimizing things for your promotion right which you know we are all um ambitious human beings and and it's there's nothing wrong with wanting a promotion just to be see right and there's nothing wrong
with being ambitious but but then focus on the impact right are you working on the right things that will have the right outcome for the business because if you are and if you are giving it your 100 that will be visible right and and making your Ambitions known to your to your manager to your leader is is a good thing right that you
should and and so when the right opportunity comes you know at least your leader or managers aware that you know this person wanting to work on something more challenging maybe I put her hand you know on that project but it you have to be focused on sort of really creating the right kind of impact for the company and not optimizing for
yourself to get promoted if you try to maneuver that too much a you know it becomes visible right and it's it's not necessarily um it's not a positive signal to the organization when they can see that that's what you're trying to do and it also distracts you from the things that you need to be focusing on so I would
say you know be uh yeah improve your skill set as a product manager make sure that you're that you made your wish known that you want to work on challenging high visibility projects or products right that really test or stretch your skills and and then be really dedicated to that cause and and and work on what has the business impact
or for the company right do the right things I really like that advice 100 agree with all of that I have a couple final way more questions and then we're gonna get to a very exciting lightning round yeah uh just to kind of for folks that maybe want to try out way more um so maybe just like where's the live now when do you think it'll roll out to new
cities and then how do people try it and use it if they live in one of those cities if that's possible we are already in Phoenix Metro area and um in San Francisco so in those cities you can just go and download the app and you can use the service we have 10 initial fully autonomous testing in LA and we're going to be expanding an elite through
the rest of the year so stay tuned for more development on that front uh and then we do have a list of cities that we're going to be rolling out in the coming years but unfortunately I can share that list just as yet and if someone lives in one of those cities is their way they could try to get on a waitlist or try to use the stuff or is
it is it like closed doors right now so it is open doors in in San Francisco and Phoenix oh got it so you just sign up and you get on a waitlist and then you might get off in Phoenix I don't even think that there is a wait list oh wow we gotta move to Phoenix that's cool or or just played uh just uh yeah a little
while in San Francisco but yeah Felix is great that's why I if you want to move there that's it's totally fine I'm gonna start packing tonight just joking uh anything else you want to touch on before we get to our very exciting lightning round no I think we talked uh about a bunch of things it's been done it's been a great conversation so far
it's not over yet we reached our very exciting lightning round I have six questions for you are you ready Bring It On okay here we go what are two or three books that you recommended most to other people crossing the Chasm by Jeffrey Moore and uh Clayton christensen's uh innovators dilemma are still sort of uh the two Plastics and product management
that I have quoted a lot and I have recommended to to many folks awesome I've got both in my little bookshelf behind me yeah me too what's uh what's a favorite recent movie or TV show that you really enjoyed I have an eight-year-old daughter and so my viewing choices are very much influenced by what she watches yeah uh
but let's see I um yeah I did enjoy the Top Gun the new top of the movie Top 10 Maverick quite a bit watched it in the in the theater and visuals were just fantastic I think it was also inspiring to see what Tom Cruise was able to do you know at uh it's Quite a feat that he pulled off at this age yeah you know I was very inspirational
to fully agree favorite interview question that you like to ask people yeah especially at the senior levels I always ask them when it was one time that you failed and what did you learn from it uh I've seen that a full tour you know was either say that they've never failed or they're trying to two guys a success story as a failure story
are usually either doesn't jeans or have not had the depth of experience so I asked that question and I'm looking for some real solid examples there awesome what's a favorite recent product that you've discovered that you love I wouldn't say that I recently discovered it it's on my um it's on my wishlist uh to buy very
soon I look on all four sustainable Mobility so I am shopping for foldable e-bike so I can do more mountain biking without doing mountain biking that's the sustainable part for me I guess but is there a specific model or brand that you uh are most excited about I would take recommendations from you but I'm still uh I'm still shopping I think electric
uh there were a couple yeah all right folks have recommendations leave uh suggestions in the comments please do and uh what's something relatively minor you've changed in your team's product development process that you've found has had a tremendous impact I wouldn't say that this is a product development
process uh you know although we in different uh parts of phase of my career I have definitely uh instituted different types of processes and tools that have held improve the product development but I would give you some an interesting one that I use a lot in my in my prior uh company and then I use a different form of things here at Primo
is what I I used to call is the rule of seven if there have been seven emails in an email thread and you still haven't resolved issue just call the person or get in a room huddle resolvent life but you know the the long email exchanges that don't converge and go anywhere I feel or waste of time for many people so I'm like you know you've
got a limit be mostly bigger companies so you have a little bits more like 10 but if you haven't resolved something within an X number of emails please just get on a call get another woman and get a result I love that and the idea is it's seven if it's like you and that person going back and forth so I mean yes yes a couple of people are just
going back and forth and um and then you know and adding more people and then adding more people and they're like everybody chimes in but where is this thing really headed I love that final question if anyone gets to ride in away mode what's a pro tip for them to have a awesome experience bring your favorite playlist and back
and enjoy the ride great I was I when I was on my right I turned on some jazz it was raining outside it was real cozy but did you actually do it on the so so there's a feature if you have a Google you have to download the Google Assistant but you can actually play your playlist in the car that's cool no I chose like a station
that was in there of just like jazz music okay yeah yeah okay this is great all right hopefully I get another ride someday yes he should should this was amazing I'm uh gonna start packing my bags for Phoenix I'm gonna sell my car Everything's Gonna Change exactly what we pushed there's your kpi thank you again for being here two final questions where can
folks find you online if they want to learn more reach out ask you maybe some questions maybe apply to join waymo if you're hiring and uh how can listeners be useful to you you can find me on LinkedIn and then if you are interested in Opportunities the page you should see all the open positions it's okay for him to reach out
to me on LinkedIn as well for product match controls how can listeners be useful to me um I would say hey sign up for the ride in Phoenix or San Francisco and La when we open up um give us feedback awesome Twitter thank you again for being here thank you it's great to um to have this conversation bye everyone thank you so much for listening if you
found this valuable you can subscribe to the show on Apple podcast Spotify or your favorite podcast app also please consider giving us a rating or leaving a review as that really helps other listeners find the podcast you can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at lennyspodcast.com see you in the next episode