Lenny's PodcastOvercome imposter syndrome and accelerate your career | Julie Zhuo (Sundial, Facebook)
CHAPTERS
- 2:58 – 6:06
Julie’s path into design: immigrant expectations, digital art, and discovering UX
Julie shares how traditional expectations (doctor/lawyer/engineer) shaped her early choices, while her love for drawing and digital tools pulled her toward design. She traces a hands-on journey from MS Paint and Photoshop to building websites, setting the foundation for a design career.
- •Family expectations narrowed career options early on
- •Digital art became accessible through undo/iteration (MS Paint → Photoshop)
- •Building personal websites introduced her to web creation and UI
- •Studied computer science as the closest ‘allowed’ path
- •Early creative exploration evolved into design thinking
- 6:06 – 9:59
Joining Facebook and leveling up fast: learning design, then management, then scale
Julie explains how she joined Facebook as an intern expecting engineering work, only to learn design was a real profession. She describes three major growth phases at Facebook: becoming a designer, becoming a manager, and learning to operate at massive scale across products and strategy.
- •A mentor redirected her toward sitting with designers—first exposure to design as a job
- •Early Facebook designers were both designers and front-end engineers
- •Phase 1: learn usability, design language, and designing for users beyond herself
- •Phase 2: thrown into management and recruiting before feeling ready
- •Phase 3: operating at scale—strategy, cross-functional work, diverse products
- 9:59 – 13:04
Imposter syndrome at Facebook: why discomfort often signals rapid growth
Julie reveals that for 7–8 years she felt like an imposter nearly every week, even as her responsibilities grew. Over time she reframed discomfort as a companion to steep learning curves—and a sign she was stretching into new territory.
- •Persistent internal narrative of ‘not deserving to be here’
- •Confidence came only after years of accumulated evidence of growth
- •Reframe: ‘unprepared’ often equals ‘learning fastest’
- •Career acceleration often comes from taking on unfamiliar problems
- •Two drivers: luck/timing + willingness to be uncomfortable
- 13:04 – 16:56
Practical tools for dealing with imposter syndrome: ask for help and be vulnerable
Julie shares concrete strategies that helped her manage imposter feelings: recognizing it’s universal, learning to ask for help sooner, and being open about struggles. She argues that vulnerability builds support networks and leads to faster learning with less pain.
- •Normalize imposter syndrome—titles don’t eliminate doubt
- •Replace ‘fake it’ with asking for help early
- •Seek peers and mentors one or two steps ahead
- •Vulnerability strengthens relationships and unlocks collaboration
- •Leaders and founders still won’t have all the answers
- 16:56 – 21:40
From VP to founder: the humbling reset of doing everything yourself
Julie contrasts large-company leadership with early-stage founding, where specialists aren’t available and every small decision lands on you. She highlights the shift back to hands-on work, relearning execution skills, and adapting management style for earlier-career teammates.
- •Large companies provide experts; startups require self-service for everything (taxes, incorporation, ops)
- •Founding reveals personal weaknesses and tasks you dislike
- •Management changes when working with early-career vs senior leaders
- •Return to IC mode: designing, PM-ing, and building from scratch
- •‘Eye vs hand’: leadership sharpens critique more than craft without practice
- 21:40 – 24:11
Why Julie started writing: overcoming fear of speaking up in big rooms
A performance review note—that she stayed quiet in larger meetings—sparked Julie’s writing habit. She set a simple goal: publish weekly for a year, using writing to practice expressing opinions publicly and build confidence.
- •Feedback: strong in small settings, silent in larger groups
- •Core fear: ‘I don’t want to look stupid in front of people’
- •New Year’s commitment: publish once per week (52 publishes)
- •Focus on action goal (hit publish), not outcomes (likes/quality)
- •Repetition reduced perfectionism and increased confidence
- 24:11 – 27:06
Career benefits of writing: clarity of thought, better communication, and community
Julie describes writing as “letters to myself” and a form of self-therapy that organizes complex thoughts. Over time it improved how she spoke in meetings and created meaningful connections with readers and colleagues.
- •Writing forces structured thinking and reflection
- •Improved ability to contribute in large meetings
- •Motivation strengthened by reader resonance and discussion
- •Maintained habit by writing primarily for herself
- •Writing as a durable personal knowledge base
- 27:06 – 30:12
How she built a writing habit: NaNoWriMo, word-count goals, and imperfect drafts
Julie explains that her earlier fiction-writing practice—and NaNoWriMo in particular—trained her to prioritize output over perfection. She recommends word-count targets and drafting first, editing later, including how she used this method to write her book.
- •Wrote fiction earlier; participated in NaNoWriMo (50k words/30 days)
- •Principle: generate ‘junk’ draft first, refine later
- •Prefer word-count goals over time goals for accountability
- •Book drafting approach: consistent nightly word targets (e.g., 500 words)
- •Cadence makes writing manageable even with a full-time job
- 30:12 – 38:11
Why she wrote The Making of a Manager: a missing guide for brand-new managers
Julie never planned to write a business book, but publisher conversations helped her see a gap: resources for first-time managers promoted suddenly from IC roles. She also saw the book process as a forcing function to improve her own management.
- •Initial reluctance: didn’t want long-form non-fiction or heavy research
- •Angle clicked: books skew toward CEOs/consultants, not ‘new manager next week’ reality
- •Personal pain point: few resources for newly promoted tech managers
- •Writing the book helped her reflect daily on management frameworks
- •She positions herself as still learning, not a perfect ‘expert’
- 38:11 – 41:04
Tweeting vs blogging: using constrained formats to sharpen clarity
Julie explains her shift toward Twitter threads as a deliberate communication exercise. Short-form constraints forced her to strip away ornamentation, structure thoughts into crisp lists, and improve real-time communication.
- •Goal: become sharper and clearer in-the-moment communication
- •Admiration for colleagues who distilled complexity into ‘1-2-3’ clarity
- •Twitter threads as weekly practice in concise expression
- •Constraints encourage focusing on the core idea
- •Short-form practice transferred into day-job communication
- 41:04 – 44:08
How to become a successful online writer (and what to avoid): write for yourself, not virality
Julie advises aspiring writers to anchor writing in personal growth goals rather than external validation. She recommends short time-bounded challenges (30 days/once a week), clear action metrics, and authentic curiosity to avoid ‘trying to go viral.’
- •Audience/likes are a fragile motivator; skill-building is controllable
- •Use action goals: word counts, cadence, or ‘publish X times’
- •Try bounded commitments (30 days, 3 months) to build momentum
- •Programs like Inktober and daily writing challenges reduce startup friction
- •Authenticity beats ‘posting what people want to hear’
- 44:08 – 50:23
Three steps to develop product sense: observe yourself, discuss products, validate with data
Julie frames product sense as curiosity and disciplined observation. She lays out a progression: introspect on your own user experience, broaden through discussions and critiques with others, then validate hypotheses using experiments and quantitative learning.
- •Step 1: observe your own emotions, confusion points, triggers, and paths
- •Step 2: compare perspectives—discuss why others adopted or rejected products
- •Study deep product analyses from strong thinkers (patterns across successful products)
- •Step 3: validate with experiments/A-B tests and causal learnings
- •Qualitative and quantitative approaches reinforce each other
- 50:23 – 54:52
When to choose intuition over data: founder context, customer proximity, and scaling limits
Julie explains that intuition can be reliable when you are the target user or deeply immersed in customer reality. As products scale or customer diversity grows, intuition degrades and must be supplemented by research, interviews, and data—especially in SaaS where contexts vary widely.
- •Best-case intuition: building ‘for us, by us’ as the target demographic
- •Facebook example: early intuition strong; later global scale caused ‘spectacular’ misses
- •Rule: the larger/more diverse the user base, the less reliable any single intuition
- •SaaS founders must interview customers across many company contexts
- •Spend time with customers to earn the right to trust instincts
- 54:52 – 1:02:41
The secret to great product/design reviews: lots of feedback, but ruthless synthesis
Julie argues for collecting diverse feedback from multiple groups rather than aiming for a single consensus meeting. The crucial work is synthesizing feedback via clear alignment on target user, problem, and job-to-be-done, then prioritizing by value → usability → delight.
- •More feedback is better—run multiple sessions with different audiences
- •Avoid consensus-driven design decisions; smart groups won’t fully agree
- •Align on target audience and job-to-be-done before debating details
- •Prioritize feedback by layers: value first, then ease of use, then joy/delight
- •Set expectations in each review: what stage you’re in and what feedback you need
- 1:02:41 – 1:06:04
How to give valuable design feedback: state the problem before proposing solutions
Julie’s core feedback rule is to articulate the underlying problem clearly instead of jumping to a specific fix. This keeps designers empowered to solve, surfaces assumptions, and helps teams align on the right priority issues before debating implementations.
- •Common failure mode: solution-first feedback (‘make it purple’) hides the real issue
- •Explain where you got stuck, what felt unclear, and why it matters
- •Problem clarity enables better collective ideation and evaluation
- •Respect the maker: designers have deepest context and should own solutions
- •Agreement on the problem prevents talking past each other
- 1:06:04 – 1:10:08
Unblocking your path to management: make it explicit, practice the skills, know when to move
Julie advises aspiring managers to tell their manager explicitly, ask what skills are needed, and create a plan to practice them before the title arrives. She emphasizes “pre-manager” opportunities (mentoring, hiring support, process ownership) and notes that sometimes the constraint is simply a non-growing org.
- •Make aspirations explicit; ask what it takes to be considered ready
- •Co-create a skill plan (e.g., recruiting, mentoring, process leadership)
- •Practice management-adjacent work as an IC (intern mentoring, onboarding buddy, meeting/process ownership)
- •Use small reps to test whether management energizes you
- •If the org isn’t growing, the role may not exist—consider changing environments
- 1:10:08 – 1:13:09
Competing for design talent: demonstrate real commitment to design and speak the language
Julie explains that great designers seek teams that genuinely value design, not organizations treating design as a checkbox. Founders can stand out by investing in design early (even via agencies/contractors), building taste and user-centricity, and immersing themselves in design culture to communicate credibly.
- •Designers want partners who care about design, not spec handoffs
- •Signal commitment via quality website/V1 experience and early design investment
- •Learn design tools, terminology, and what designers value
- •Be deeply people-centric and demonstrate taste in product decisions
- •Build relationships in the design community—long-term trust pays off
- 1:13:09 – 1:15:12
Where to find Julie and how to help: Twitter/LinkedIn, Looking Glass, Sundial interviews
Julie shares where people can follow her work and what she’s building at Sundial. She invites growth PMs and data practitioners to reach out so she can learn how teams use data and analytics in practice.
- •Find her on Twitter (@joulee) and LinkedIn
- •Newsletter: The Looking Glass (archives on Substack/Medium)
- •Book: The Making of a Manager
- •Startup: Sundial (sundial.so) focused on accessible product analytics
- •Open DMs—seeking conversations with growth PMs and data teams
