Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth - Product lessons from Waymo | Shweta Shrivastava (Waymo, Amazon, Cisco)

Episode Date: April 9, 2023

Brought to you by Vanta—Automate compliance. Simplify security | Public—Invest in stocks, treasuries, crypto, and more | LMNT—Zero-sugar hydration—Shweta Shrivastava is a Senior Product Leader at Waymo, an autonomous driving technology company backed by Alphabet. Prior to joining Waymo, she was the CPO of Nauto, where she also worked on AI-assisted driver tools. Shweta has worked in product for over 15 years in senior roles at several companies, including Amazon and Cisco. In today’s episode, we discuss:• How Waymo builds trust with riders• Product management at Waymo vs software-only products• The state of self-driving technology• The importance of being a disruptor and why large companies need to disrupt more• Underrated product management skills—Find the full transcript at: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/product-lessons-from-waymo-shweta-shrivastava-waymo-amazon-cisco/#transcript—Where to find Shweta Shriva• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shshrivastava/—Where to find Lenny:• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com• Twitter: https://twitter.com/lennysan• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/—In this episode, we cover:(00:00) Shweta’s background(03:47) What Shweta and her team are responsible for at Waymo(05:30) About the autonomous driving vehicle hardware, software, and simulation tools (08:14) Differences in working at Waymo vs. a more traditional software company(11:02) How Waymo builds trust with riders and the difference between driver assist and fully autonomous(13:57) An example of how Waymo builds trust with riders(15:55) The commercial, operational, and system behavior metrics Waymo uses (20:38) What are L5 autonomous vehicles and why Shweta thinks L4 vehicles are good enough(22:53) How to keep investors enthusiastic when it’s a long-term investment(25:24) Building successful teams and successful products(26:39) Determining what you’re not building, especially before product-market-fit(27:49) Why large companies need to disrupt their own models (29:33) The most underrated product management skills(33:07) Tips for getting promoted(35:19) Where is Waymo and how to try it out(36:46) Lightning round—Referenced:• Waymo: https://waymo.com/• Nauto: https://www.nauto.com/• Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Working-Backwards-Insights-Stories-Secrets/dp/1250267595• Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling Disruptive Products to Mainstream Customers: https://www.amazon.com/Crossing-Chasm-3rd-Disruptive-Mainstream/dp/0062292986• The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail: https://www.amazon.com/Innovators-Dilemma-Technologies-Management-Innovation/dp/1633691780• Top Gun: Maverick on Amazon Prime: https://www.amazon.com/Top-Gun-Maverick-Tom-Cruise/dp/B0B18G8R9B—Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [e-mail]. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lennysnewsletter.com/subscribe

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 Schweta Shravastava.

Schweta 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, L.A. and Phoenix. I 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, Schweta was Chief Product Officer at Naoto, and AI startup focusing on driver and 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, Strette's 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 this all happen. With that, I bring you Schweta Shrubastava after a short word from our sponsors. This episode is brought to you by Vanta, helping you streamline your security compliance to accelerate

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Do all your investing in one place and earn 4.8%, a higher yield than a high yield savings account, only with a treasury account at public.com slash letty. Shweta, welcome to the podcast. Thank you. Great to be here. It's great to have you. I thought we'd start with just a lot. little bit about what it is you do at Waymo today. What are you and your team is responsible for

at Waymo? Yeah, my team's responsible for three key areas, I would say one is building a big part of the software that actually runs on board, the affiliate tunnel's vehicle, and that determines the actual behavior and trajectory of the vehicle. Secondly, building the simulation tools and technologies that are required to validate the performance of the system. And and a third one of the teams focused on commercially scaling our ride-hining business, which is one of our key go-to-market applications for the technology we're building. So as you know, you arranged a ride for me in a Waymo in San Francisco. It was actually a really rainy day.

And 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 in the back and this thing just rise you around. also just like a memory ahead 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 in this self-driving car and just

sitting in the back and telling you where to go and so so anyway I'm going to ask you a bunch of questions around this but again thank you for arranging that ride that was a quite special No, 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 technology Has been performing very well, which has been very hard-dneyed for us to see. A few questions along these lines. One thing that I noticed that was really cool is

We were 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 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 have you all learned?

And 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 learned mortals. So it's important to make sure that the behavior with the car doesn't seem robotic. Right. It can feel quite unnatural. And, you know, from the get-go, we focused on building a filiatan system.

So it's important to have that familiarity, that trust, you know, building with the writers where they're not daunted by technology. They don't feel like they're sitting in our robot. It has to feel very human-like, but in a good way, right, making it safer than human driving, but then not making it feel unnatural. And so we have, you know, deep-learned models that can understand what the other road user's intent is. or stuff like, you know, which way the pedestrian is looking, right? Or what is their body orientation? Because that could tell you, you know, which way they're headed. The road signs or the gestures, right, somebody is trying to stop the vehicle.

The system can understand all those signals. So because we're using DPRD models trained on human driving, but again, in a good way, right, we discard the bad human driving data. 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 we can't also just completely rely on explicit gestures and signs, right? Because a lot of driving is also social norms, right?

If you're in a particular section in San Francisco, maybe it's okay for pedestrians to cross even when they don't have a walk sign, right? another city and other intersection might have a different social norm when it comes to pedestrians crossing the four-way stop sign or the crosswalk or what have you. And so the car also has to learn about those social norms and be able to react to it. So it's like I said, we don't realize how sophisticated, how interactive and how social driving really is. And with our artificial intelligence capabilities, you know, we have been able to incorporate a lot of that.

to our system behavior. So before Waymo, you worked at non-self-driving 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. I said earlier, you know, it's a highly complex, technically complex system that we have built and we're improving. And 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 totally catch. I work at Amazon. I'm a fan, right? And they have been pretty transformational with AWS and on the e-commerce site. But a fully autonomous driving system, you know, it's also a very, very hard problem, right? So it's transformational from that perspective, too. I would say that the PMs here have to go, have to be able to go technically deep, you know, compared to what the,

what they would do in other software products. They have to be able to get into the details as much as needed. They have to be okay with uncertainty and ambiguity. Again, I think that is part and parcel of any product management role, but it's even more so here, right? This is a long game, and so you have to have that tenacity to play the long game and be continuously improving the product and make this thing a broad reality in future.

So those are some of the attributes. I would also say that there is some level of self-selection here. You know, you have to be driven by the mission to meet the road safer, right? We have about 1.35 million debts 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 checking my text messages while driving. I've seen other drivers do that, right? with a fully autonomous technology, 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 SaaS product management world or product management world in general has a whole new meaning here at Bebo when you work in a product like this because safety is, you know, top of mind for all of us, right? And we can't really cut corners on safety. there's no, you know, there's, 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, um, 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, So I have a 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 where, like, I should probably trust it because it's 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 maybe surprised you? Or is that what thought was really interesting or that was really important? Since you mentioned Tesla, you know, I just want to clarify that. It's a different system network 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 so the people who are using that product would also have that mindset that, hey, I should be ready to take over when the situation demands. Because we've built the system from the get-go

to work in a fully autonomous mode without a human driver intervention right at the wheel. We had to integrate this into our design philosophy from the very beginning, that this has to feel credible, predictable, and the writers have to be able to trust the system, right? So that has been 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 not. like for the first five minutes of the right, it's, wow, you know, it's this thing really happening, right? But then it starts to feel very natural. And, and, you know, as if this is how it was always meant to be, right? After the first five minutes, it's like, 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 naturalness, the smoothness, 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. If they're not wearing the seed 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 have an issue. They can look at the monitor in the car, right, to understand what the car is seeing. So I think all these little things help develop that trust in the system. On that same note, what's one thing that 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-car experience. I don't know if I can point to one thing.

You know, it is, again, this is such a holistic experience is that 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 the discussion so far. So again, because 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 above the speed limit. Right? It doesn't go about the speed limit.

It sticks or adheres to the speed limit. It is something that a lot of our riders 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 slopes or the gradients, you know, the street with inclines in San Francisco,

there are many of those, right? The human brain is trained to, or the human drivers are sort of, you know, subconsciously they slow down when they go downhill. Yeah. Yeah. 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 we know. learned that 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 we modified the behavior on. That makes sense. I would want it to slow down on the other hand. If I feel like I could trust it, 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 analyze on sort of a daily basis, weekly basis, depending upon what the metric is. But if I were to categorize them, sort of two broad categories that be the commercial and operational metrics and the system behavior metrics, right? So one important thing to note here is that it's not, we're not in a proof of concept or a pilot phase anymore, right? This is the service that we are offering to writers, you know, page service in Phoenix and also it's open to public in San Francisco, right? So it's an actual service and so we're tracking, you know, 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 is the thing costing us to operate? So that's, I would say, all the stuff on the commercial scaling side. And then on the driver performance, the VEMO drivers, the technology name, as I alluded to earlier, the driver performance metrics, you know, they span across safety, the compliance to the road rules, our ability to make adequate progress, as in, you know, not get,

newly 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 in one of those teams? The goal here is to be able to drive safer than than humans, right? Now it's we don't really have one standard human driving benchmark, right? Safety benchmark that everybody uses, right? But we do gather enough of that data, right? we have access to enough of that data to form an opinion on or a metric on, a benchmark on,

what does human driving look like? You know, how many collisions as an example, a human driver would have every 100,000 miles. And then we want to make sure that our performance is better than that. 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, 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 not what we're building.

Right. 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 way 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 look at the priors, et cetera, and really understand what would an adequate performance be there and measure our own against that. Awesome. Today's episode is brought to you by Element. I just recently discovered this stuff actually from another podcast, and it is such sweet,

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so you have to head to DrinklmnT.com slash Lenny to take advantage of this offer. Stay salty. I'm guessing you're not going to have an answer to when do we think we'll have fully self-driving level 5 autonomy. So let me ask you a different approach to that question of just 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 stuff 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 let me share my opinion on the L5. So I think so L4, for, you know, for those who might not be very familiar with this term, you know, N2L3 is still very much driver assists. You know, there gets to some level of autonomy,

but then relies on the human driver at the wheel to be able to take over in complex 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, completely unstructured, off-roading, in that kind of an environment, be able to drive without any map,

without any priors, what have you. And we believe that by offering the kind of service that we are offering in Phoenix and San Francisco and then L8 through the rest of this year and other cities in future is it helps realize that the dream of the fully autonomous driving in a big way, right,

without having to go to L5. So I think that the technology is already there. L5, I'm not sure, you know, maybe that becomes more niche, etc. 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 can barely drive in slow. I get that far. Yeah, and I don't like to drive in snow. Even tough, I avoid on a very snowy days. But, yeah, you know, that is something that we still have to build as a capability in driving frog and snow fine now. So that's great.

Makes sense. Clearly, there's 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 four is 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 and a large project. I know this is 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 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 backing from Alphabet and other investors. And, 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 show progress, right? Show meaningful progress and meaningful progress

not just in terms of technology, but in terms of commercial deployments, right? That is the rubber meets the road, if you will, phase of the product. And the results have to speak for themselves, for our investors to have the confidence in us, right? So notwithstanding, you know, what's happening to other AV companies in the industry.

You know, it's about what we are doing and they look at the purpose that we've been making and where we are headed. and the fact that we've been sort of accelerating our milestones and blowing through our own expectations, I think these are very positive 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 for. Your focus is on creating value for the customers, creating value for the writers, right? 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 something that, you know, doesn't align with the business goals in order to gain any short-term brownie points with the investors. I think it doesn't work that way. And the investors will see through that too. Definitely, Alphabet, you know, has been our backer for forever, right?

So it's really about focusing on 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. 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 so even at the scale of Waymo, 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, so 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 a big company or a startup, the core product management tenant is still the same, which is, you know, you have to work backwards from the customer problem or the user problem, right?

Building a technology for the sake of it is, you know, doesn't really go that far. So you really have to focus on the, what are you building, who are you building it for, and what problem are you solving? And that this applies in any context. Amazon has this great process where the PMs have to write a press release for the finished product, even before they start building the product, right? That's the first thing that they have to do is to write that press release, like the product's about to launch today, right?

What are you telling the users about that product? Really forces them to think about the value proposition more thoroughly, right? And I know many of the companies are starting to sort of look at that practice as well. but I found it very effective. Do you do that Waymo or do you folks do that? Is there kind of a system there? The explicit PR FAQ process that Amazon follows is, you know, I think WAMO has its own version of it. But it is about sort of focusing on the customer problem.

Now, Vamo is also a very different kind of product, right? It's highly integrated. So in different types of product management flavors, if you will, right? Some are more technically focused and technically deep, some more commercially focused. 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 big less is at least working in so the large companies that I have had is

it's also very important to know what you're not building. And this one is not as big companies, I would say, even in startup, it's extremely important to know what you're not building because you could very easily get sweet by customer X telling you to do this, customer Y telling you to do this. that and a product that tries to be all things 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 very important. And then in the context of the large companies, what I was going to say was, you know, I think it's the classic innovators dilemma, right?

The large companies tend to be the market share leaders in their focus areas. And so the product team and the product leaders can get very incremental in their product strategy, and then low-end behold, you know, you can see an upstart that comes and disrupts them, right? And so I have definitely learned the lesson that you need to disrupt yourself before somebody else does. Because it's going to happen, it's inevitable. And large companies that are constantly sort of, you know, challenging themselves

and disrupting their own models, right, or their own product capabilities to bring something more transformational for the customers are the ones that really succeed. And I think this is where the product leaders have to bring in that might settle. Are we getting too complacent? It's time to dispute. That's such a good reminder. Is there an example of you doing that or something you worked on

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 PM, and then I drove the team around it 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, you know, this was sort of a first-of-its kind service that the team worked on. So this has played out many times in my career. And so I am 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 listening and empathy are the top ones.

These are very important. I think when folks think about product management, you know, think about sort of the influencing without authority and prioritization and being able to write with PREs, et cetera, all those things are sort of more. top of mind, the listening and empathy. I wouldn't say that they are underrated. I think there is now a lot more recognition that these are of core skills if you want to be able to influence a lot without a quality. 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. you take the time to formulate that opinion, to really learn and understand the customer in the market, and really be true to that tenet of working backwards from the customer problem, not just, you know, say, because it's become such a platitude now in the product world. Yeah, there's a book. There's a whole book called Working Backwards Now. Yes.

That is the one thing that I would say that somebody 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 be able to do 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've led in different types of companies that I've worked with. In startup as well as a big company, right? The dynamic is different, right?

And again, the team that you're working with in different companies have different culture. So then you're working with, let's say, an engineering leader, being able to understand what are his or her constraints, right? Where is he or she coming from? What does impact look like to that person? And then understanding and then understanding where you're aligned, where you're not aligned are things that you have. have to develop and start paying a lot more attention to as you sort of rise in your career or go up the ladder. And I think a lot of that for me came by just being in different kind of situations and different kinds 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 a step to do it. 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 great listener. Yeah. Well, I think one, one tech or one, one tip that I could, you know, share is, is just challenging your own assumptions, right? So I think listening with an open mind, but then, you know, 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, 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 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. 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 maybe wants to get promoted or struggling to get promoted, what would you say are 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? I'm going to say something that might sound a little 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 sort of the impact, right? It is about having an impact and then doing what is right for the business. So not sort of, you know, optimizing things for your promotion, right? We are all ambitious human beings, and there's nothing wrong with wanting a promotion just to be clear, right?

And there's nothing wrong with being ambitious, 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 making your ambitions known to your manager, to your leader is a good thing, right? That you should. And so when the right opportunity comes, you know, at least your leader or managers are aware that, you know, this person wanted to work on something more challenging. So maybe I put her and, you know, on that project.

But you have to be focused on sort of really creating the right company 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 not necessarily, 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, yeah, improve your skill set as a product measure. Make sure that you've made your vision on that you want to work on challenging high visibility projects or products, right, that really test or stretch your skills and then be really dedicated to that cause and work on what has the business impact or 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 going to get to a very exciting lightning round. Just to kind of for folks that maybe want to try out way more. So maybe just like, where's alive 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 in San Francisco. So in those cities, you can just go and download the app and you can use the service. We have done initial fully autonomous testing in LA and we're going to be expanding in LA through the rest of the year. So stay tuned for more development on that front.

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't 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 wait list or try to use the stuff or is it like closed doors right now? So it is open doors in San Francisco and Phoenix. Got it. So you just sign up and you get on a wait list and then you might get off.

In Phoenix, I don't even think that there is a wait list. Oh, wow. Oh, man. I got to move to Phoenix. That's cool. Or just wait, just, yeah, a little violent San Francisco. But yeah, Phoenix is great. So if you want to move there, that's totally fine. I'm going to start packing tonight. Just joking. Anything else you want to touch on before we get to our very exciting lightning round? No, I think we talked about a bunch of things. It's been a great. conversation so far. It's not over yet. We've reached our very exciting lightning round. I have

six questions for you. I'm 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 Clayton, Christensen's innovators, still a mar, still sort of the two plastics and product management that I have quoted a lot and I have recommended to many folks. Awesome. I've got both in my little book shelf behind me. Yeah, me too. What's a favorite recent movie or TV show that you really enjoyed? I have an eight-year-old daughter.

So my viewing choices are very much influenced by what she watches. Yeah. But let's see. Yeah, I did enjoy the Top Gun, the new Top Gun movie, Top Gun Maverick quite a bit. You watched it 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, it's quite a feat that he pulled off at this age. Absolutely.

I was very inspirational. 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? I've seen that folks who are, you know, who either say that they've never failed or they're trying to guys, a success story as a failure story

are usually either disingenous 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 wish list to buy very soon. I look at all for sustainable mobility so I am shopping for a foldable e-bike. So I can do more mountain biking without doing mountain biking. That's the sustainable part for me, I guess.

Is there a specific model or brand that you are most excited about? I would take recommendations from you, but I'm still shopping, I think, electric. There are a couple. All right. Folks have recommendations. Leave suggestions in the comments. Yes, too. And 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. You know, although in different parts of the phases of my career, I have definitely instituted different types of processes and tools that have helped improve the product development, but I would give you an interesting one that I used a lot in my prior company, and then I use a different form of things here at VMO is what I used to call as 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, how to resolve it life. But, you know, the long email exchanges that don't converge and go anywhere, I feel are a waste of time for many people. So I'm like, you know, you've got a limit. Family is a bigger company, so, you know, the limit's more like 10.

But if you haven't resolved something within an X number of emails, please just get on a call, get a number of men, and get resolved. I love that. And the ideas, it's seven. if it's like you and that person going back and forth seven times. Yeah.

Or, you know, we're a couple of people just going back and forth and then, you know, and adding more people and then adding more people and then they're like, everybody chimes in, but where is this thing really headed? I love that. Final question. If anyone gets to write in a way more, what's a pro tip for them to have an awesome experience? Bring your favorite playlist. Sit back and enjoy the ride.

Great. When I was on my right, I turned on some jazz. and it was raining outside. It was real cozy. Did you actually do it on the... So there's a feature. If you have the Google, you have to download the Google Assistant, but you can actually play your play list 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, you should. Schwita, this was amazing. I'm going to start packing my backs for Phoenix. I'm going to sell my car. Everything's going to change. Exactly what we wish for. 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 how can listeners be useful to you? You can find me on LinkedIn. And then if you are interested in opportunities at Waymo, go to Waymo Careers webpage. You should see all the open positions.

It's okay for you to reach out to me on LinkedIn as well for product management roles. How can listeners be useful to me? I would say, hey, sign up for the ride in Phoenix or San Francisco and L.A. when we opened up, give us feedback. Awesome. Shreda, thank you again for being here. Thank you.

It was great 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 Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Also, please consider giving us a rating or leaving a review as that really is that really helps other listeners find the podcast. You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at Lenny'spodcast.com. See you in the next episode.