Humanizing product development | Adriel Frederick (Reddit, Lyft, Facebook)

Lenny's Podcast: Product | Growth | Career

Lenny Rachitsky

Technology, Business, Entrepreneurship

5 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 20 October 2022

⏱️ 67 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Adriel Frederick is VP of Product Management at Reddit X, where he helps incubate and scale new products. He is a former Product Lead at Facebook, as well as a former PM and Director of Product at Lyft. In today’s episode, we focus on what it takes to become a better product leader. Adriel shares anecdotes from his time at Lyft and Facebook, insights about how to lead through tough times, why there isn’t an algorithmic solution to everything, why R&D teams need to be a part of the core mission, the tangible benefits of working on diverse teams, and his thoughts on the future of AI. He also introduces the concept of cannonballs, why you should focus on the marginal user, why organization and empathy are the most important PM skills, and so much more.

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Find the full transcript here: https://www.podpage.com/lennys-podcast/humanizing-product-development-adriel-frederick-reddit-lyft-facebook/#transcript

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Where to find Adriel Frederick:

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/drellf

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adrielfrederick/

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Where to find Lenny:

• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/lennysan

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/

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Thank you to our wonderful sponsors for making this episode possible:

• Linear: https://linear.app/lenny

• Flatfile: https://www.flatfile.com/lenny

• Eppo: https://www.geteppo.com/

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Referenced:

• Jules Walter on Twitter: https://twitter.com/julesdwalt

• Jules Walter’s guest post on Lenny’s newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/product-sense

• Mark Zuckerberg on The Joe Rogan Experience: https://open.spotify.com/episode/51gxrAActH18RGhKNza598

• Sam Harris’s TED Talk on AI: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nt3edWLgIg

• Facebook’s 7 friends in 10 days: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-chamath-palihapitya-dramatically-improved-user-malinda-senanayake/

• The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power: https://www.amazon.com/Prize-Epic-Quest-Money-Power/dp/1439110123/

• The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations: https://www.amazon.com/New-Map-Energy-Climate-Nations/dp/0143111159/

• Revisionist History podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/revisionist-history/id1119389968

• Tuned In podcast: https://www.hpacademy.com/blog/tuned-in-high-performance-academy-podcast/

• Mo on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/81134264

• Radiant Nuclear: https://www.radiantnuclear.com/

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In this episode, we cover:

(00:40) Adriel’s background

(06:13) What he does at Reddit X

(07:27) Reddit X’s avatar marketplace and NFTs

(08:33) Why R&D teams need to be a part of the core mission

(11:12) What it’s like to be the first black PM at Facebook

(14:58) How to foster diversity

(19:40) Being a PM at controversial companies, and how to evaluate criticism

(28:25) Adriel’s most stressful time at Lyft

(30:35) The importance of operational control and what it means

(32:35) Why there isn’t always an algorithmic solution to everything

(37:47) Thoughts on AI

(42:42) Growth hacking and algorithms at Facebook

(48:18) Cannonballs in growth—fundamental changes in the product for optimization

(49:07) Facebook’s “7 friends in 10 days” push

(51:30) What is a marginal user, and what can you learn from their experience?

(56:06) How to think about doing experiments

(59:10) Why organization and empathy are the most important skills

(1:02:59) Lightning round

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	they're probably I call them techno utopians who would say feed all data to the
0:04.8	algorithm given an objective and it will do the right thing and I was like yeah the
0:10.6	reason that falls down is the algorithms don't understand long-term effects often
0:17.3	Nor do they understand how people might respond to it?
0:20.0	Nor do they understand your intent for the product.
0:22.5	And I think it's really important for product managers to play that role.
0:25.8	That is our job.
0:27.2	When you are working on algorithmic heavy products, your job is figuring out what the algorithm should be responsible for, what people are responsible for, and the framework for making decisions. Welcome to Lenny's podcast. I'm Lenny and my goal here is to help you get better at the
0:46.4	craft of building and growing products. Today my guest is Adriel Frederick. Adriel
0:51.8	is a VP of product at Reddit where he focuses on incubating and scaling new products within Reddit.
0:57.0	Before that, he was director of product at Lift, where he led the Marketplace teams and the pricing teams over the course of five years and
1:04.0	before that he was an early PM at Facebook where he spent four years leading the
1:07.6	user acquisition team. Adriel is one of these incredible product leaders who is
1:11.8	way too under the radar because he doesn't
1:14.4	spend all day on Twitter and instead is executing and building great products.
1:19.6	One of the goals of this podcast is to highlight incredible product leaders who you may not be aware of and
1:24.4	Adriel is a great example. In our chat we talk about the origins of growth hacking,
1:30.1	how to get better as a product leader, waste increased diversity at your company,
1:35.0	what it was like to work on Facebook's growth team early on, the future of AI, and a lot more.
1:40.9	It was such a joy chatting with Adrile and I am really excited to share this
1:44.6	episode with you. With that I bring you Adrile Frederick. This episode is brought
1:50.9	to you by Linear. Let's be honest, the issue tracker that you're using today isn't very helpful.
	...

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