Decoding Duolingo: Returning to the Office, Enabling First-Time Managers & More | Fabio Lessa

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**Dan Lines** (1:17)
Hey everyone, welcome to Dev Interrupted. This is your host, Dan Lines, co-founder and COO at Linear B.
And today we're joined by Fabio Lessa, Senior Director of Engineering at Duolingo. Fabio, welcome to the show.

**Fabio Lessa** (1:33)
Yeah, thanks for having me.

**Dan Lines** (1:35)
Yeah, awesome to have you on with us today. I think a lot of people know, but if you don't know, Duolingo is a great company.
In fact, some of our producers actually use the app, producers of Dev Interrupted, so they were excited to have the conversation today.
And we're going to get into a lot of the things that you're doing at Duolingo. You have some interesting training programs for managers, so we're gonna touch on that. I think our audience will be really interested in that. But also, we're gonna talk about some insights of how to create a great company culture that's not just a culture, but kind of transform into a business value.
But before we talk about those things, you're passionate about RTO, which for those of you who don't know what that means, I didn't know the acronym, so it's Return to Office, which is a really hot topic right now, actually completely different than when we first started this podcast. It was during the pandemic. I think I was working out of a closet in my tiny apartment. And back then, everyone wanted to talk about remote work and how to make a transition to working at home. But as all things in life that we've learned, it's about balance. So maybe the pendulum's coming back a little bit here with the RTO. So if we fast forward to today, I think it's great. Let's just start there. You say, Duolingo has a strong belief in this in-person office culture. Why is that?

**Fabio Lessa** (3:09)
Yeah, I think it's something that we've always believed in. I think our founders always made, put an explicit effort into making sure that we had a nice office and we hung out together. So we invested a lot on that. I think, if you look at it, we don't do anything different in the office. If you go to a Duolingo office, the things we have there are things you'll find in a lot of tech companies today. We have good lunch. The setup is really nice. But I think there is something tangible about that investment and how people feel about work. As a personal experience, I can share it.
When I joined, I was actually Phil at Spotify, and I was looking for my next opportunity.
I was interviewing with a few companies, and that's when Duolingo reached out to me.
And so I was like, you know, I'm already interviewing, preparing for interviews, might as well add one more to the list, but wasn't really thinking much of it. So it was right before the pandemic. And I actually traveled to Pittsburgh, where our headquarters are, to do my interviews. And it was that day of interviews that I spent in the office and met everyone that I really got sold on the job. I don't know, I just felt tangible, like how the people genuinely were happy working here and enjoyed it. So it definitely bumped it to the top of the list.

**Dan Lines** (4:19)
So how did the pandemic actually, because you know, like pandemic, we went all remote.
Did that change your opinion during that timeframe about remote culture? Or then did you like get like sick of it a bit? And now like, how do you compare like the pros and cons of each world?