From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuo (Facebook VP, Sundial CEO, The Making of a Manager author)
Julie Zhuo is the former VP and Head of Design at Facebook (now Meta), author of the bestselling book The Making of a Manager, and co-founder of Sundial, an AI-powered data analysis company. Also, my first-ever podcast guest over 3 years ago!
In our conversation, we discuss:
- The three core manager skills that translate directly to managing AI agents
- How her team uses AI to learn new skills 10x faster
- The “diagnose with data, treat with design” framework for balancing gut and data
- Why hypergrowth AI companies have terrible data infrastructure (and why it doesn’t matter)
- How to give feedback that actually lands—including Julie’s exact script for difficult conversations
- What Julie’s teaching her kids about an AI future (hint: it’s not coding or STEM)
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Brought to you by:
Mercury — The art of simplified finances
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Transcript: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/from-managing-people-to-managing-ai-julie-zhuo
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My biggest takeaways (for paid newsletter subscribers): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/i/172723725/my-biggest-takeaways-from-this-conversation
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Where to find Julie Zhuo:
- X: https://x.com/joulee
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/julie-zhuo/
- Website: https://www.juliezhuo.com/
- Newsletter: https://lg.substack.com/
- Sundial: https://sundial.so/
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Where to find Lenny:
- Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com
- X: https://twitter.com/lennysan
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/
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In this episode, we cover:
(00:00) Welcome back, Julie!
(05:18) The success of The Making of a Manager
(08:41) Why AI will make everyone a manager
(11:38) The future of management roles
(14:00) Empowering teams with AI
(21:30) Specific roles being accelerated by AI
(26:53) Data analysis in AI companies
(32:02) The role of data in design
(37:21) The evolving role of managers in the AI era
(40:22) Embracing change and uncertainty
(42:14) Timeless lessons for managers
(49:03) Balancing strengths and weaknesses
(57:49) Building a feedback culture
(01:05:33) Creating win-win situations
(01:09:27) Being aware of your own energy and conviction
(01:12:12) Navigating disagreements with higher-ups
(01:15:57) AI corner
(01:20:08) Contrarian corner
(01:23:14) Lightning round and final thoughts
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Referenced:
- Julie Zhuo on accelerating your career, impostor syndrome, writing, building product sense, using intuition vs. data, hiring designers, and moving into management: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/episode-2-julie-zhuo
- Waymo: https://waymo.com/
- How we restructured Airtable’s entire org for AI | Howie Liu (co-founder and CEO): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-we-restructured-airtables-entire-org-for-ai
- Cursor: https://cursor.com/
- The rise of Cursor: The $300M ARR AI tool that engineers can’t stop using | Michael Truell (co-founder and CEO): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/the-rise-of-cursor-michael-truell
- Inside ChatGPT: The fastest growing product in history | Nick Turley (Head of ChatGPT at OpenAI): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/inside-chatgpt-nick-turley
- Behind the founder: Marc Benioff: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/behind-the-founder-marc-benioff
- OpenAI’s CPO on how AI changes must-have skills, moats, coding, startup playbooks, more | Kevin Weil (CPO at OpenAI, ex-Instagram, Twitter): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/kevin-weil-open-ai
- Anthropic’s CPO on what comes next | Mike Krieger (co-founder of Instagram): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/anthropics-cpo-heres-what-comes-next
- The Magic Loop: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/the-magic-loop
- Dunning-Kruger effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
- Eric Antonow on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com
