Episode · Lenny's Podcast · 2026-03-01
Lenny Rachitsky & Jenny Wen: books mentioned on Lenny's Podcast
The design process is dead. Here’s what’s replacing it. | Jenny Wen (head of design at Claude)
Jenny Wen leads design for Claude at Anthropic. Prior to this, she was Director of Design at Figma, where she led the teams behind FigJam and Slides.
Jenny Wen recommended The Power Broker by Robert A. Caro and Insomniac City by Bill Hayes.
Books mentioned, in the order they came up
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The Power Broker
Recommended“The first one is The Power Broker by Robert Caro, which is an which is an incredibly aggressive recommendation given that it's a it's like 1100 pages. Uh but I think in this era when our our when our attention spans are so short, I think this is actually worth reading end to end.”
Where to get it
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Insomniac City
Recommended“The second one that I recommend to a lot of people is uh, a book called Insomniac City, which is written by Bill Hayes, who is was the partner of the scientist Oliver Socks around the time that Oliver Sox died.”
Where to get it
Other mentions in this episode (2) — ad reads, self-promotion and passing references, never counted
Passing Radical Candor
“That is awesome advice. It's interesting how often this this uh just like management style comes back or management uh good management it comes back reminds me of what was it candid radical cander just this combination of caring deeply and challenging directly.”
Passing The Power Broker
“Interestingly, I saw Julie Zoo, uh, famed design leader, was reading The Power Broker recently. I don't know what's going on over here, spreading in design.”