Collaboration & Innovation in the Time of AI w/ Anurag Agarwal & Lizzie Matusov #193

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Oct 24, 2024

Anurag Agarwal, a leader in Google Workspace engineering with 18 years at Google, and Lizzie Matusov, co-founder of Quotient and a thought leader in engineering leadership, dive into AI's impact on collaboration and innovation. They discuss how AI is revolutionizing product development, enhancing user experiences, and reshaping team dynamics. Their insights on fostering autonomy and trust within teams, navigating ethical AI practices, and maintaining effective communication provide a compelling look at leading in a tech-driven landscape.

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INSIGHT

AI Is A Phase-Shift For Product Design

Generative AI produced a phase-shift that forced Workspace to rethink product boundaries and user journeys across the suite.
Teams moved from single-product roadmaps to designing connective experiences that automate cross-product workflows.

INSIGHT

Treat Teams As Learners, Not Experts

Teams acknowledged rapid model changes and adopted a shared beginner mindset: "there are no experts."
They prioritize experimentation and customer feedback to learn what users actually do with AI features.

ADVICE

Set Metrics And A Clear Launch Bar

Set clear objectives and metric-based launch bars to let teams iterate autonomously toward measurable goals.
Communicate the reasoning behind goals so teams understand trade-offs and avoid last-minute opaque decisions.

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We’re back with another session from ELC Annual 2024! This episode features an engaging session on collaboration & innovation in the time of AI with Anurag Agarwal, VPE, Google Workspace @ Google, and Lizzie Matusov, Co-Founder & CEO @ Quotient! In this conversation, they dissect how AI is transforming not only the products engineering teams are building but also how teams work together internally. They cover how Google / Google Workplace specifically use AI both internally & externally, strategies for creating & maintaining alignment across a large org, how Anurag addressed challenges during this transitional period, and more.

ABOUT ANURAG AGARWAL

Anurag Agarwal leads the Google Workspace engineering organization, overseeing products such as Gmail, Calendar, Chat, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides and Meet that help billions of users and customers across the world to connect, create and build together.

With over 18 years of experience at Google, Anurag’s expertise spans a wide range of consumer and enterprise products and technologies. His career began in the Display Ads team, where he played a pivotal role in developing publisher ad-serving products from the ground up. He then worked on the Search Ads team driving a number of large-scale infrastructure improvements and leading initiatives such as online-to-offline measurement and monetization of surfaces like Maps and Discover. Prior to his role in Workspace, he spearheaded some early stage incubation projects at Google like Google Health’s CareStudio project aimed to help clinicians get a comprehensive view of patient’s health information.

Anurag spent his childhood in Delhi, India and now resides in the Bay Area with his family.

" One of the things we sort of tried to do from very early on is to make sure teams see their success in terms of overall workspace success, in terms of more users actually being able to accomplish their work more effectively using all of Workspace's tools, right? It's not about the individual tools, it's really about the whole together.”

- Anurag Agarwal

ABOUT LIZZIE MATUSOV

Lizzie Matusov is the co-founder and CEO of Quotient, a developer tool that surfaces the friction slowing down engineering teams and resolves it directly. Her team also co-authors Research Driven Engineering Leadership, a newsletter that uses research to answer interesting questions on engineering leadership and strategy. She previously worked in various engineering roles at Red Hat and Invitae, and has an MS in Engineering Sciences and MBA from Harvard.

SHOW NOTES:

Anurag’s career at Google & what he’s currently working on (2:38)
The evolution of Google Workspace & incorporating GenAI (4:31)
Diving into internal AI use within Google / across teams (6:37)
Challenges faced while creating alignment (9:47)
Frameworks for setting goals & aligning KPIs more effectively (11:57)
How Google ensures its team feel safe to fail & allow autonomy (14:03)
Strategies for maintaining alignment across a large org (16:09)
How Anurag’s leadership has evolved through technology transformations (18:07)
Strategies for helping teams accomplish tasks & be continuously learning (20:33)
Anurag’s favorite rituals / changes from this transition (24:09)
Audience Q&A: What has been your biggest challenge shipping AI? (25:26)
Defining Workspace’s corpus for the individual vs. the enterprise (27:29)
How do you ensure content moderation when using AI features? (28:13)
Build guardrails for LLMs depending on the context (29:18)
How the center of excellence team distributed its knowledge across various orgs (30:48)
Strategies for drawing a line where Gemini responds & ensuring determinism in the response (32:15)
Quotient’s processes for QA & automation (34:02)
Understanding the ethics / responsibilities behind AI usage (35:11)
The evolution of developmental practices with deterministic code vs. apps written with AI (36:43)
Anurag & Lizzie’s key takeaways (38:28)

This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:

Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host

Jerry Li - Co-Host

Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/

Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/

Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/

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