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

Julie Zhuo, former VP of Design at Facebook (author of The Making of a Manager and writer of The Looking Glass) and now founder of the analytics startup Sundial, discusses her career journey from artist to design leader. The conversation covers imposter syndrome, writing as a thinking tool, building product sense, balancing intuition with data, giving design feedback, moving into management, and hiring designers.

01Key learnings

• Growth often comes from being in uncomfortable, unfamiliar situations; Julie notes that feeling like an imposter tends to coincide with the fastest periods of learning, so reframe discomfort as a growth signal.
• Seek environments that are scaling, since growing companies create more opportunities to volunteer for new responsibilities and take on work you haven't been trained for.
• Share your struggles openly with peers, mentors, and reports; vulnerability builds deeper connections and lets others help you solve problems faster.
• Use writing as a thinking tool: writing letters to yourself clarifies your reasoning and can build the confidence to speak up in large meetings.
• Set action-based goals like a fixed word count or a weekly publishing cadence rather than audience-based goals, and get the first draft out before worrying about quality.
• Build product sense by observing your own reactions to products, then discussing decisions with others, reading product critiques, and validating through experiments and data.
• Founders should rely on their intuition only as long as they deeply know their customers; as the user base diversifies, intuition becomes less reliable and research and experiments matter more.
• In design reviews, first align on the problem and where the product is in its development, then prioritize feedback in order: value, ease of use, then delight.

02Frameworks mentioned

Summary and takeaways written by PM Atlas; quotes are short excerpts. © the original author.