Episode · Lenny's Podcast · 2026-05-03
Lenny Rachitsky & Max Schoening: books mentioned on Lenny's Podcast
Why cultivating agency matters more than cultivating skills in the AI era | Max Schoening (Head of Product, Notion)
Max Schoening is head of product at Notion, where he’s been especially effective at getting designers and PMs to ship code, prototype in the terminal, and launch extremely successful AI products.
Max Schoening recommended Code by Charles Petzold, Tools for Conviviality by Ivan Illich, and Seeing Like a State by James C. Scott, and discussed How Buildings Learn by Stewart Brand and The Timeless Way of Building by Christopher Alexander.
Books mentioned, in the order they came up
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How Buildings Learn
Discussed“Now the timeless way of building and Stuart Bran's uh sort of how buildings learn I think idea is also that it's very likely that the best homes for you are not actually built by an architect.”
Where to get it
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The Timeless Way of Building
Discussed“Now the timeless way of building and Stuart Bran's uh sort of how buildings learn I think idea is also that it's very likely that the best homes for you are not actually built by an architect.”
Where to get it
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Code
Recommended“I would say so code uh by uh Charles Pzled which is uh the secret language of hardware and software. It basically it's like do you know how computers actually work?”
Where to get it
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Tools for Conviviality
Recommended“I have a weird one uh which is tools of conviviiality by Ivan Illich. It's sort of the contrast between like you look at the history of technology and tools that let users exercise human ingenuity and autonomy”
Where to get it
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Seeing Like a State
Recommended“And then the last one that I give mostly to executives uh that I think are creating a lot of systems uh is uh seeing like a state uh which I think there is a famous stack overflow that sort of um popularized this”
Where to get it
Other mentions in this episode (3) — ad reads, self-promotion and passing references, never counted
Passing Bible
“It comes from the Bible. And just paraphrasing, the quote is, "I was made for such a time as this."”
Passing Bible
“I'm going to come back to my quote from the Bible. I feel like that actually is an answer to this question that it was made for such a time as this.”
Passing Project Hail Mary
“I did like uh uh Project Hail Mary uh a lot. I liked the book and I think the adaptation was was was really good.”