Meta’s Head of Product (and 29th employee) on working with Mark Zuckerberg, early growth tactics, why PMs are like conductors, and more | Naomi Gleit

Lenny's Podcast: Product | Growth | Career

Lenny Rachitsky

Technology, Business, Entrepreneurship

5 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 27 October 2024

⏱️ 98 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Naomi Gleit is head of product at Meta, joined as employee #29, and is the longest-serving executive at Meta other than Mark Zuckerberg. She’s been at the center of some of the company’s most foundational products, including Facebook’s early growth team. In our conversation, we discuss:

• How she originally landed at Facebook

• The evolution of Facebook’s growth team and key metrics

• Lessons from working with Mark Zuckerberg

• Insights from Facebook’s activation metric and retention strategies

• Leadership lessons and “Naomiisms” for effective product management

• Tactics for creating extreme clarity in team communication

• Advice for running effective meetings

• More

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Brought to you by:

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Find the transcript and show notes at: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/metas-head-of-product-naomi-gleit

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Where to find Naomi Gleit:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/naomigleit

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/naomi-gleit/

• Website: https://naomi.com/

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Where to find Lenny:

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

• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan

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

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In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Introduction to Naomi Gleit

(01:53) Naomi’s journey at Meta

(06:18) Landing a job at Facebook

(10:40) Becoming a product manager

(13:40) Working as Head of Product at Meta

(14:55) Insights on working with Mark Zuckerberg

(20:04) Small Groups and “disagreeable givers”

(24:28) The legendary growth team

(33:45) Activation metrics and onboarding

(43:44) Naomi’s leadership and PM philosophy

(53:00) Canonical documents

(55:55) Simplifying complex projects

(01:00:33) Teen accounts: a case study

(01:06:37) Running effective meetings

(01:12:10) The importance of exercise

(01:16:36) The role of a product manager

(01:25:49) Lightning round

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Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	I really believe in frameworks for things that helps drive extreme clarity.
0:03.7	I work on a lot of different projects.
0:05.0	A lot of times I'm ramping up mid-project, I'm like, where can I learn what I need to learn about this project?
0:09.2	I ask five different people, get five different answers.
0:11.7	That is unacceptable.
0:13.0	Of course, I'm sure there's hundreds of docs
0:14.6	associated with the project,
0:15.8	but there needs to be one canonical dock.
0:17.7	Everyone should know exactly where the canonical dock is.
0:21.4	That's the one place I can go to to get all the information I need about a project and it will link to all the other
0:26.8	Docs things on the canonical dock are
0:32.4	Today my guest is Naomi Glyte.
0:34.6	Naomi is head of product at Meta.
0:37.4	Other than Mark Zuckerberg, she's the longest serving executive at Meta.
0:41.7	She joined what was then called Facebook as employee number 29
0:45.2	and has been at Meta for almost 20 years. She's seen the company scale from 30
0:49.8	employees to the one and a half trillion dollar business that it is today.
0:54.3	Naomi does very few podcasts and interviews and so I was really excited to chat with her
0:58.6	and have her on this podcast.
0:59.8	In our conversation we dig into the many lessons that she learned from Facebook's early and
1:04.4	legendary growth team, her superpower of taking really complex and gnarly problems and projects,
1:10.1	simplifying them and delivering results.
	...

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