Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
An inside look at how the New York Times builds product | Alex Hardiman (CPO at The New York Times)
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One thing that's really interesting is that our impact in like our business goals are in service of our mission, which is to seek the truth and kind of help people understand the world, not the other way around. And so what it means is that the way that we think about impact is growing a giant subscription business, that business exists to strengthen an informed democracy at a time when people are struggling to understand basic facts and struggling to understand each other. And that means that impact for us is growing subscribers, but it's also when a deeply reported story triggers an important policy change or a new law. And so when you're a product manager, you're involved again in like driving specific metrics like engagement or subscribers, but you're also trying to help stories find their real audience in ways that trigger just this whole different side of mission and purpose-driven impact. And I didn't feel that when I was at a place like Facebook. - Welcome to Lenny's podcast. I'm Lenny and my goal here is to help you get better at the craft of building and growing products. Today, my guest is Alex Hardiman. Alex is Chief Product Officer at the New York Times, where she leads teams that build the company's news, cooking, games, audio, and advertising products. Prior to this role, she was Chief Product Officer at the Atlantic. And before that, she spent two years at Facebook, where she led their news product, amongst other things. As you'll hear in our conversation, Alex has been at the center of the storm so many times, including at Facebook right after the 2016 election, then at the New York Times, right as COVID hit. She shares so many stories and insights about how the New York Times builds products, what it's like for product teams to work with journalists, what's good and bad about working at a company like the New York Times versus a fame tech type company, and also how they went about acquiring and integrating the world. It's such a blast doing this interview, and I hope that you enjoy it as much as I did. With that, I bring you Alex Hardiman. Today's episode is brought to you by Miro, creating a product, especially one that your users can't live without is damn hard. But it's made easier by working closely
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