Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth

Lessons in product leadership and AI strategy from Glean, Google, Amazon, and Slack | Tamar Yehoshua (Product at Glean, ex-Google and Slack)

September 26, 2024

AI Summary

5 min read

Tamar Yehoshua, president of product and technology at Glean, discusses product leadership principles from her time at Slack, Google, and Amazon, emphasizing impact-driven execution, cross-functional alignment, and adapting to AI's rapid changes.

Career acceleration through impact and people

Success comes from excelling at the current role by driving business impact, not just meeting assigned goals—such as reorganizing teams if they hinder productivity. Understand people deeply: motivations for using products or joining teams, honed by observing reactions and asking questions. No need for rigid career plans; instead, follow top talent to learn skills that endure, even if companies fail, building networks like the Google or PayPal alumni.

Chaos in winning companies

Strong product-market fit—where users clamor for the product—enables hypergrowth despite internal breakdowns like turnover, broken IT, or reorgs. Chaos correlates with scaling, as infrastructure lags behind rapid hiring (e.g., 50% of employees new in six months), but constant strategy shifts prevent achievement. Well-run operations matter more post-scale (5,000+ employees); prioritize distribution, sales, and cash over fixing everything.

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What you'll learn

1 `* (02:15) **Career success habits**`
2 `* (08:17) **Product intuition and driving impact**`
3 `* (11:45) **Chaos doesn't block success; prioritize PMF**`
4 `* (19:12) **No career plans: follow great people**`
5 `* (26:37) **Lessons from Bezos, Butterfield, Benioff**`
6 `* (38:34) **Cross-functional alignment, especially with eng**`
7 `* (46:04) **Ignore vocal unhappy minority in changes**`

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app

Show Notes

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

• Why you don’t need to be a well-run company to win

• The impact of AI on product management and the future of work

• How to build strong cross-functional relationships, especially with engineers

• Lessons learned from working with leaders like Jeff Bezos and Stewart Butterfield

• Strategies for staying ahead in a rapidly evolving tech landscape

• Much more

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