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

**Lenny Rachitsky** (0:03)
Welcome to our very first episode with Julie Zhuo. Julie spent 13 years at Facebook, where she was the head of design for the Facebook app. She actually joined as an IC designer and worked her way up to VP of Design. She's also an incredible writer, having written the best-selling book, The Making of a Manager. She's also the author of a newsletter called The Looking Glass, which was a huge inspiration to me throughout my entire career. Since leaving Meta, she started her own company called Sundial, which you'll hear a bit about. And in our chat, we cover career advice, imposter syndrome, product review meetings, hiring designers, giving feedback to designers, and so much more. I hope you enjoy this chat as much as I did.
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Julie, I am so excited to be chatting. You've been such an inspiration to me both in my PM career and in my writing. I think I mentioned that your newsletter inspired my newsletter. And so I'm really excited to be chatting and I'm really thankful that you're joining me on this podcast.

**Julie Zhuo** (3:01)
Thank you, Lenny. It is a pleasure to be here. I think it's going to be a super fun conversation.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (3:06)
The most fun. For listeners who maybe aren't familiar with you and your career, could you just kind of briefly walk us through your journey in design and then a little bit about what you're up to these days?

**Julie Zhuo** (3:16)
Let's see. I am a first generation immigrant to the United States. And so with Asian parents, there were really only three options that I had for a career. From like the time I was six years old, I was told I could either be a doctor, a lawyer or an engineer. Nothing else was really in the realm of possibilities.
Unfortunately, you know, I was really scared of blood, so I couldn't be a doctor. And I only liked reading fiction growing up, so I could never really be a lawyer. So I was always like, okay, this engineering thing. But actually, it was during middle school and high school that I discovered what I love to do is drawing and in particular, digital art. And the reason for that is because I actually have very shaky hands. And so whenever I draw a line, it never looks good, I have to erase it, start over, you know. And so by the time the art was done, it was like a mess. It was like, here's like 20,000 eraser marks.
But when I discovered MS Paint, and I kid you not, that was my very first design application, I was like, oh my gosh, I can draw a line. And even if it looks crummy, which it always does, because you have to use a mouse in those early days, I can just Ctrl Z, go Z way and just keep trying over and over again. No one ever has to know how often I tried to get this to be what I wanted. And so MS Paint became PaintShop Pro. And then one summer, I finagled my way into a pirated copy of Photoshop, because I couldn't actually afford real Photoshop and I was off to the races in my digital art career.