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Focus on the work that actually matters

Name: Focus on the work that actually matters
Uploaded: 2024-03-13T14:00:32Z
Channel: Peter Yang
Description: This is a YouTube video titled "Focus on the work that actually matters" containing a monologue by Ben Horowitz recorded in March 2024. The content…

13 Mar 2024

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This is a YouTube video titled "Focus on the work that actually matters" containing a monologue by Ben Horowitz recorded in March 2024. The content discusses the distinction between direct work activities like customer interaction and product development, and the extensive coordination and socializing efforts required behind the scenes in product management and team collaboration.

I think that is like there's the work and there's the work behind the work. The work is talking to customers, working with engineers and designers to build things, analyzing data, identifying opportunities, figuring out what you need to change and iterating like. Then there's all the work behind the work. Every single intermediary output, product briefs, product specs, technical specs, figma docs, exact DAX roadmap reviews, strategy reviews, data reviews, all those sorts of things. And over time, because of the cost of cross coordination across a bunch of different teams, you end up having to spend as much time socializing the work. The process of like a product review goes from we're here to think hard about this problem so that we get better ideas and build better stuff to I need to convince this executive that I'm smart and that I know what I'm doing and just get a green check mark on it.