Overcome imposter syndrome and accelerate your career | Julie Zhuo (Sundial, Facebook)

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/#transcription — Where to find Julie Zhuo • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/julie-zhuo/ • Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/joulee • Sundial: https://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 — Where to find Lenny: • Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com • Twitter: https://twitter.com/lennysan • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/ — In this episode, we cover: [00:00] How Julie found her way into product design [09:24] How Julie navigated impostor syndrome at Facebook [12:31] Advice for people feeling imposter syndrome [16:57] The challenges Julie faces as she transitions from VP to founder  [20:48] What goals Julie was able to achieve through writing [26:00] What did she do to build a habit of writing? [29:56] Why Julie decided to write a book [38:16] Tweeting vs blogging [40:50] How to become a successful online writer (and what to avoid) [43:48] Three tried-and-true steps to develop product sense [48:35] When to choose intuition over data [54:28] The secret to facilitating great product/design review meetings [1:02:33] How to give valuable design feedback [1:05:28] What can you do to unblock your path to become a manager? [1:09:50] A must-know trick in competing for design talent [1:13:05] Where to find Julie — Thank you to our wonderful sponsors for making this episode possible: • Amplitude: https://amplitude.com/ • Productboard: https://www.productboard.com/ • Sprig: https://sprig.com/lenny — Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.