The Career Architect:
Killing Projects to Win

Noam Lovinsky

Chief Product Officer, Grammarly

2025

The Thesis

Kill Your Project to Advance Your Career

"I remember talking to the leadership team and being like, I don't think we should be putting 50 engineers on this project. This team would be better served elsewhere. Even though that was likely negotiating my way out of a job."

Noam killed his own YouTube project in month 3 to free resources for higher-priority work
He then asked to be "layered" under a better manager (atypical career move)
Both decisions signaled: what's best for the business comes before personal advancement
Result: he was promoted and trusted with larger responsibility

Career Patterns

Four Different Growth Arcs

YouTube (-1 to 1): From losing money to sustained profitability. Took over creator experience.
Thumbtack (1 to -1 to 1): Reignited growth after SEO changes killed traffic. The "prettiest smile graph."
Facebook (0 to 1): Built New Product Experimentation, a startup incubator within a startup.
Grammarly (ongoing): Scaling a consumer product to massive scale while maintaining quality.

The unifying principle

Noam gravitates toward work that stretches him most, not the safest role. He's an "IC trapped in a manager's body" who needs to build things.

Framework

How to Think About Company Strategy

Establish guiding principles: At Thumbtack: customers first, pros second, Thumbtack last. Live by them in hard moments.
Work backward from business outcomes: What's best for users isn't always what's best for the business. Resolve these conflicts with principles.
At leadership table: Everyone (CEO, CFO, head of sales, product, engineering) must think about product strategy. No silos.
During crisis: The team that tackles recovery together builds trust for years. Strategy is a team sport.

Thumbtack's turning point

When SEO traffic crashed, the team diversified to paid acquisition. But first they had to ask: what drives long-term marketplace health? Answer: high-quality customers for pros. Everything flowed from that principle.

The layering decision

Asking to report to Hunter Walk instead of CEO Salar Kamangar wasn't weakness, it was clarity about where he'd do better work. The best leaders know which relationships enable them.

Playbook

Build Innovation Inside Scale

Set realistic expectations: champagne outcomes (next Instagram) are rare. Beer-and-dinner wins are wins.
Protect new product teams from performance management cycles designed for core business
The right incentives matter more than the right org chart
Do things that don't scale first, then scale what works

On building at big companiesLarge orgs are speed demons at execution but slow at discovery. An incubator team flips that: slow on execution, fast on discovery, protected from politics.

Contrarian

Career Growth Myths Noam Challenges

✗Build your personal brand online to succeedINSTEAD →✓ Do deep work on what excites you. Great work attracts people. Authentic is better than famous.

✗Protect your project at all costsINSTEAD →✓ Kill projects that aren't the highest priority. Signal you think about the business, not just your turf.

✗Never ask to report to someone elseINSTEAD →✓ Ask to be layered differently if it means better mentorship and better work. Healthy orgs reward this clarity.

✗Most growth happens staying in one companyINSTEAD →✓ Pattern-seek across different scales. YouTube, Thumbtack, Facebook, Grammarly teach different lessons. Diversity of experience compounds.

Based on Noam Lovinsky's episode on Lenny's Podcast. All ideas on this page are from the episode.Watch on YouTube Follow @noaml on X

GO DEEPER IN THE EPISODE

04:18 Noam’s lack of online presence 08:06 Lessons from YouTube: advocating for what’s best for yourself and the team 14:31 Prioritizing what’s best for the business 19:37 Knowing when it’s time to kill a project 21:47 Lessons from Thumbtack: diversifying growth channels and overcoming challenges 26:24 How Thumbtack turned growth around 31:44 Building Airbnb’s instant booking feature 35:28 Lessons from Thumbtack: team collaboration and product strategy 38:38 Lessons from Facebook: building the New Product Experimentation team 40:43 The importance of starting small and building community density 46:07 Advice for building a startup within a startup 48:52 Having an incentive system 49:34 Lessons from Grammarly: adapting to changing user needs and building for the masses 54:20 The scrappiness and profitability of Grammarly 56:56 The resilience and motivation of the Grammarly team in Ukraine 59:08 General career advice 01:01:02 When to pull back 01:02:58 Closing thoughts 01:03:56 Lightning round

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