Interview with Julie Zhuo: How the book “The Making of a Manager” came to be
I reached out to the wonderful Julie Zhuo as I was building out my project https://thebooksbywomen.com for a submission on the Product Hunt Makers Code 2019 Festival. She was kind enough to share her insights on how the book Making of a Manager: https://amzn.to/2J1VDmj came to be. Julie is a VP of Design and Facebook and the origins of this story trace back to her being the first intern at the company.
Hey Julie, can you do a walkthrough of your background?
I was Facebook’s first intern. I joined the company when it was still a college and high school desktop site, with fewer than 10 million users. At such a high-growth company, opportunities abounded as we scaled, and at the age of 25 I became a manager. It was a great privilege, but I’ll be honest — my first few years were marked by three key emotions: fear, doubt, and am I crazy for feeling this way? I learned through doing, and often doing things the wrong way. Five years ago, I started blogging about my experiences. I did it for myself at first, to help me think through things more clearly and develop my voice, but over the years hundreds of thousands of readers found my articles. I realized that many of my experiences were widely shared and felt. Today, I am the VP of design overseeing the user experience of the Facebook service. It’s been a tremendous journey.
When did you first think of writing this book?
I originally had no intention of writing a book until I was much older and wiser, but an early conversation with my future publishers made me realize that there was a book I could — and should — write right now: a field guide for new managers. This was because I still vividly remember what it felt like to be new to the job, when everything felt awkward and unfamiliar and scary. I don’t know that I write as convincingly about the topic in, say, 10 years because I would be so far removed from that experience. I also remember going to the bookstore as a new manager and being greeted by shelves upon shelves of leadership books discussing some new organizational trend or leadership practice, but very little that just described the basics: here is the 101 on managing — here’s how to conduct a 1:1, run an effective meeting, understand what to look for in an interview, and build team culture. I decided to write the book I wish I had when I was 25.
What was the biggest challenge in writing this book?
I work in web software, where there is no such thing as “done” because we’re constantly iterating every week, so the idea that this book had a deadline by which it was final and no other changes could be made was daunting. I have a perfectionist streak which meant that the editing phase felt high-pressure. I could have kept tweaking and tweaking, but at some point I had to tear myself away from the manuscript. This represents my worldview at a moment in time, and maybe in a few years my thinking will evolve, but that that’s okay. That’s what a book is — a collection of thoughts at a moment in time.
What would you like everyone to know and take away from the book?
Great managers are made, not born. The easiest way to learn how to be great is through feedback — both the practice of constantly asking for feedback with an open and curious mindset and the giving of feedback to others. Feedback is one of the greatest gifts we can give to our colleagues, because it’s what helps them grow. I have two chapters in my book dedicated to the art of giving feedback and how to ask for it as a way to accelerate learning.
You can order Julie’s wonderful book on Amazon: https://amzn.to/2J1VDmj
★ Support #BooksByWomen:
This is a personal initiative meant to highlight books written by women in the business and tech space. If you want to support me keep this project going , you can donate a ☕ or 🍜 to me via Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/kalinaz
You can always tweet with #BooksByWomen if you want to add a book to the list on the website or have an author interview you wish to happen ❤️
