Julie Zhuo on accelerating your career, impostor syndrome, writing, building product sense, using intuition vs. data, hiring designers, and moving into management

Lenny's Podcast: Product | Growth | Career

Lenny Rachitsky

Technology, Business, Entrepreneurship

5 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 7 June 2022

⏱️ 72 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Julie Zhuo is the co-founder of Sundial, a company that helps builders make meaningful use of data to fulfill their mission. With over 400K followers across social media, she is one of the most influential leaders in product design, and product thinking broadly.

Julie started her career at Facebook as a product designer and eventually led teams of 100+ designers as the VP of Design. Her experience leading at Facebook motivated her to publish the Wall Street Journal best seller The Making of a Manager in 2019. On the side, Julie shared her thoughts on technology, design, and leadership in The Looking Glass, the blog that inspired Lenny’s Newsletter.

Find the full transcript here: https://www.podpage.com/lennys-podcast/julie-zhuo-on-accelerating-your-career-impostor-syndrome-writing-building-product-sense-using-intuition-vs-data-hiring-designers-and-moving-into-management/#transcript

In this episode, you will learn about:

1) The making of a VP

* How did Julie find her way to product design?

* How did she navigate through impostor syndrome given the growing responsibilities as Facebook rapidly scaled?

* What are the challenges she faces as she transitions from VP to founder?

2) The impact and habit of writing

* What goals was Julie able to achieve through writing?

* What did she do to build a habit of writing?

* Does she think tweeting is better than blogging?

3) How to develop product sense and make better design decisions

* What are the three tried-and-true steps to develop product sense?

* When do you choose intuition over data?

* What’s the secret to facilitating great product/design review meetings?

3) How to take your first steps into management

* What can you do to unblock your path to become a manager?

* What’s the must-know trick in competing for design talent?

Where to find Julie:

* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/julie-zhuo/

* Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/joulee

* Sundial: sundial.so

* Book: The Making of a Manager, https://www.amazon.com/dp/B079WNPRL2/ref=dp_kinw_strp_1

* Substack: https://lg.substack.com/

* Medium: https://medium.com/the-year-of-the-looking-glass

Our amazing sponsors:

* Amplitude: https://amplitude.com/

* Productboard: https://www.productboard.com/

* Sprig: https://sprig.com/lenny

Get full access to Lenny's Newsletter at www.lennysnewsletter.com/subscribe

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome to our very first episode with Julie Zoo.
0:08.0	Julie spent 13 years at Facebook where she was the head of design for the Facebook
0:12.1	app.
0:12.6	She actually joined as an icy designer and worked her way up to VP of design.
0:17.0	She's also an incredible writer, having written the best-selling book,
0:21.0	the making of a manager.
0:22.0	She's also the author of a newsletter called The Looking Glass,
0:25.0	which was a huge inspiration to me throughout my entire career.
0:28.0	Since leading Meta, she started her own company called Sundial,
0:32.0	which you'll hear a bit about. And in our chat, we cover
0:35.1	career advice, imposter syndrome, product review meetings, hiring designers, giving feedback
0:40.1	to designers, and so much more. I hope you enjoy this chat as much as I did.
0:48.8	This episode is brought to you by Amplitude, the number one product analytics solution.
0:55.0	Amplitude helps product teams, growth teams, marketing and data teams,
1:00.0	build winning products faster and turn products into revenue.
1:04.0	Amplitude has everything you need including an integrated CDP,
1:08.0	self-service analytics, and even an experimentation platform
1:12.0	to help you better understand your users, drive conversions,
1:15.9	and increase engagement, growth, and revenue.
1:19.3	Amplitude is built for teams that want to learn as fast as they ship and ship as fast as they learn.
1:24.8	Did your vanity metrics, trust your data, work smarter, and grow your business.
1:30.3	With over 1,700 customers like Atlassian, Insta Kart, and HBO,
	...

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