Adriel Frederick
VP of Product Management, Reddit. On 1 show, 1 appearance. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
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Adriel Frederick is the VP of Product Management leading Reddit X, the internal incubation division developing new platform bets. He previously served as Director of Product Management at Lyft and was a growth product lead at Facebook.
Everything Adriel Frederick said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Frederick: Driver complaints about Lyft's unpaid pickup times were legitimate
“I think there were really legitimate complaints about the structure of driver P. That were coming up and that were behind, I think some of the complaints and some of the big stories in the press and some of the big kind of legal action that was taken. Paying f…”
Frederick: Despite bad use cases, NFT tech is in its infancy with valuable gems
“I think the technology behind NFT uses been used for some really nefarious things, but I think we're still in the infancy of using these technologies appropriately. There's a lot of like terrible use and a lot of uses that are wastes, but I think there's some …”
Frederick: Diversity initiatives only work when tied to concrete business value
“When you recognize that you get business value from it, then it all of a sudden becomes something that you look out for and you take care of. That's it. And there's definitely a lot more to it. But I think when it goes from, frankly, something people feel they…”
Frederick: Centralized domestic teams designing for global markets feels colonial
“There's something that feels like the approach to not doing it that way feels colonial. It almost feels like we're a group of people sitting down in this like tower in this country. In this relatively like sterile environment. And don't worry, we know exactly …”
Frederick: Algorithmic optimization fails because models lack context on long-term product intent
“The reason that falls down is the algorithms don't understand long-term effects often. Nor do they understand how people might respond to it, nor do they understand your intent for the product.”
Frederick: Zuckerberg ended metric debates by demanding 10 friends in 14 days
“There was a lot of debate about what the number should be, what time frame should be. And at some point, Zakja said, 10 friends, 14 days, go. And it just got people past the academic debate of like, all right, got it. As many friends as possible, as fast as po…”
Frederick: PMs must define the boundaries between algorithms and humans
“When you are working on algorithmic heavy products, your job is figuring out what the algorithm should be responsible for, what people are responsible for, and the framework for making decisions.”
Frederick: Reddit's NFT avatar marketplace is performing amazingly well
“We have a, an avatar marketplace that we've been working on recently where creators have been able to make art, put it up for sale on Reddit and make that available for other folks to buy and use. And that's been performing amazingly well. The underlying techn…”
Frederick: Corporate R&D teams fail unless tied to core mission and shared wins
“So first is the rest of the company needs to see what you're doing as being core and critical to the mission. It can't seem like these guys are just playing off in a corner on something that isn't related to what we are doing every day. Cause I think that lead…”
Frederick: Globally diverse teams make building international products much faster
“And it just makes you so efficient. Because an argument that might take two weeks to resolve because you have to go recruit a panel of users and talk to them and figure out what's going on. We kind of knock out in 15 minutes. We're just throwing it back and fo…”
Frederick: Meaningful disruption inevitably generates public controversy and conflict
“I don't think you're going to have any meaningful influence on the world without changing some pattern of behavior. And if you're changing a pattern of behavior, there's somebody who's invested in that pattern of behavior, and that's going to create some confl…”
Frederick: PMs should ignore press noise and solve customer problems
“And so I think for PMs, it's It was so easy to get sucked into like the press and it's like, yo, plan the work worth the plan. Go back to your job. That's what you're supposed to do. Solve for customers in the middle of this, and then you figure out how to com…”
Frederick: Operational control must be a first-order requirement in marketplace algorithms
“I think the big learning, at least in that business, was you have to think about operational requirements and operational control as a first order requirement.”
Frederick: Quantitative data alone cannot diagnose marginal user friction
“Something I caution people against though is don't use the data alone to figure out who the marginal user is. It'll give you a clue where they are and what might be wrong. We'll give you some hints. It's not going to give you the answer. You have to go watch t…”
Frederick: Analyzing worst-case user experiences reveals systemic product flaws
“I like to go to the worst. It shows me everything that's wrong, but the marginal user thinking helps you prioritize what thing to do next.”
Frederick: Product teams succumb to laziness by over-indexing on small experiments
“There's a laziness that can creep in where you're just finding a lot of little things because they're easier to come up with and they're easier to design and think about. It's easier to build. It's easier to talk to your boss and see, we move the number by poi…”
Frederick: Asking candidates to teach you something tests empathy and communication
“Teach me something you don't think I know. It's a really good test of what you've heard me say a lot, empathy. I heard Chamath use it once and I kept trying it to see what it was good for. And it helps you understand how good somebody is at reading you, how mu…”
Frederick: I was the first Black product manager at Facebook
“I was the first black product manager at Facebook.”
Frederick: Designing for shared devices and prepaid SIMs drove Facebook growth
“So when I was working on user acquisition and designing registration for Facebook, that knowledge was incorporated into the design of the product in ways that I think other companies not caught on to yet. And I know for a fact that a lot of that thinking that …”
Frederick: Product managers must act as emotional buffers during hype and PR crises
“As a PM, you are a leader. You have to provide a buffering or damping effect on the team. And that goes two weeks. Sometimes we're doing stuff that everybody thought was amazing. This is the best thing we've ever seen. And you kind of got to bring people back …”
Frederick: Sustainable product growth requires grinding on core user actions
“One of the things I recommend for people when they're thinking about growth for their product is figure out what the core actions are and then grind on them.
Think about removing them, removing friction in some of them, but just keep staying at it.”
Frederick: The hardest part of empathy is taking your own shoes off
“And the hardest part of it is they say getting in somebody else's shoes. The hardest part is taking my own shoes off.”
The other half of the tape: Adriel Frederick's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 3 times in 1 episode across the shows. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Jules Walter 3
Every mention by year
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Lenny's Podcast 3
2023 3 mentions in 1 episode
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Adriel's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LENNY'S PODCASTLEDGER | VP of Product Management, Reddit | 1 | 23 | — | full record on Lenny's Podcast → |