Julie Zhuo
Co-founder of Sundial; former vice president of product design at Facebook; author of The Making of a Manager; writes The Looking Glass.
Julie Zhuo did not write this page.
We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.
Filter All topics · Newest first
-
Their wordsExcellence in design is not just about craft quality. It is about whether a designer is both willing and allowed to create impact.
-
Our reading
Okay design improves what is put in front of it; excellent design changes what is possible.
Their wordsOkay design improves what is put in front of it. Excellent design changes what is possible.
- 7 months earlier
-
Their wordsmanagement is just about in my mind having an outcome. So you want to get something done. That's the thing. You have a northstar. You have a vision and you're just trying to figure out how to use the resources that you have to get that thing done.
↗From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuoyoutube.com 1st of 22 in this recording
-
Their wordsAnd you have to understand the strengths of of you know used to be people but now it's basically models and different models have different strengths. So it's like they have different personalities
↗From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuoyoutube.com 2nd of 22 in this recording
-
Their wordsif you're really unclear about what success looks like the prompt, you're probably not going to get the most amazing work. Um I think that's true for managing teams and it's very much true for managing AIs.
↗From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuoyoutube.com 3rd of 22 in this recording
-
Their wordsbut if I was, you know, at the zero or 10th percentile, it can certainly get me even today very quickly up to like the 60th 70th in terms of um what the state of the art is.
↗From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuoyoutube.com 4th of 22 in this recording
-
Their wordsAnd so the main thing that I felt so excited about and this is something I tell my team all the time is we need to dissolve the boundaries of these traditional roles.
↗From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuoyoutube.com 5th of 22 in this recording
-
Their wordsI find that sometimes when you have like a designer or product manager and let's say I'm an engineer, then when I have a problem like, oh, I need to figure out the product definition, my default will be, well, I've got these people and that's kind of their job description, so I'm just going to delegate that to them.
↗From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuoyoutube.com 6th of 22 in this recording
-
Their wordsSo yes, the tools are great. We can use cursor. It helps us. It autocompletes. It writes a bunch of things. But the acceleration of learning I think is another maybe underutilized tool in all of our arsenals
↗From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuoyoutube.com 7th of 22 in this recording
-
Their wordsSo the funny thing, my funny answer to this is I don't actually think a lot of the fast growing companies are using data well at this point. And the main reason why is because traditionally things just didn't grow that fast.
↗From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuoyoutube.com 8th of 22 in this recording
-
Their wordsIt's easier to even predict whether growth will slow down at a certain point. it's easier to catch these trends earlier. If you don't have good observability over how your business runs and what the company's um key levers are, then you will be scrambling.
↗From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuoyoutube.com 9th of 22 in this recording
-
Their wordsused to be let's say in the Google world right I knew you were interested in shopping if you click the shopping tab I know you're interested in maps if you click the maps tab, we can measure clicks. Today, it's just all conversation. And so, it's actually harder for us to tease apart what is the user intent.
↗From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuoyoutube.com 10th of 22 in this recording
-
Their wordswhat you really want is you want to diagnose with data and treat with design. So data is not a tool that's going to tell you what you should build or what the solution is or how we're going to, you know, cure the fact that you don't have really great retention. It's just not.
↗From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuoyoutube.com 11th of 22 in this recording
-
Their wordsBecause it's like okay we got these numbers and the numbers go up. It's like no, the fact that you still have to choose which things you look at is an art, not a science. And your interpretation of if the number went up 5%, is that good? Is that not good? Is also an interpretation and is an is an art, not a science.
↗From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuoyoutube.com 12th of 22 in this recording
-
Their wordsSo the other thing I would say that I really support is like you just actually can't make a really great product by thinking you can AB test your way into it.
↗From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuoyoutube.com 13th of 22 in this recording
-
Their wordsI think that managing change, it's always been manager's job to manage change and there's always the chaos of what's going on. I just think the rate of change is accelerating and we've seen that over the last couple of decades.
↗From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuoyoutube.com 14th of 22 in this recording
-
Their wordsand that's in some ways what allows it to be very sturdy so I Think today management is really about this idea of like be sturdy while being flexible and that is a very hard thing to pull off
↗From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuoyoutube.com 15th of 22 in this recording
-
Their wordsAnd I am a very big believer that every strength is its own weakness and every weakness is a strength. There's no such thing as you're going to somehow, you know, get every dimension to be 100%.
↗From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuoyoutube.com 16th of 22 in this recording
-
Their wordsI go back to usually when people are unhappy it's because these things are a little bit out of sync. Like they want this big thing, but they don't actually they're not actually excited about what it takes to do that thing and therefore it's just going to be a mismatch.
↗From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuoyoutube.com 17th of 22 in this recording
-
Their wordswe often also have this mental model of like oh our managers are a judge and they're going to judge me on whether or not I got it I did well I should get a promotion I should be fired so there's this sometimes fear that people have but I think in the very best relationships the manager is like a guide
↗From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuoyoutube.com 18th of 22 in this recording
-
Their wordsBut feedback really in my mind ideally should be like a daily practice because the thing that matters for us in the long run as a team is how quickly are we getting better. So a team that just gets 1% better every week compared to a team that gets 1% better a month is even if they start off at a much lower baseline is going to outperform in a very short amount of time the team that doesn't get better.
↗From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuoyoutube.com 19th of 22 in this recording
-
Their wordsI can tell you right now, every single manager I've ever managed where they're like, I don't really think this is a good idea. The there's no case where I can think of where the project somehow turned out to be like wildly successful.
↗From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuoyoutube.com 20th of 22 in this recording
-
Their wordsAnd so it's not really about the environment or the wall. It's really about how we see it and whether we can find the thing that is deep and rich and infinite in that direction.
↗From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuoyoutube.com 21st of 22 in this recording
-
Their wordsYou can shortcut like hard feelings because now you can just watch TikTok instead of actually dealing with the very difficult emotion or tension that you had with a colleague or with your partner or with your children.
↗From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuoyoutube.com 22nd of 22 in this recording
- 3 months earlier
-
Their wordsBut great taste is more objective than we assume.
↗When AI Has Better Taste Than Youlg.substack.com 1st of 3 in this piece
-
Their wordsSeen as a prediction engine, human taste is far more vulnerable to AI competition than we'd like to admit.
↗When AI Has Better Taste Than Youlg.substack.com 2nd of 3 in this piece
-
Their wordsat the highest echelons, taste is not just prediction, it’s also movement making. The most significant tastemakers take social risks.
↗When AI Has Better Taste Than Youlg.substack.com 3rd of 3 in this piece
- 6 weeks earlier
-
Their wordsSometimes designers will go to great lengths to make a user interface novel, or minimal, or simple. This is the wrong goal. Novelty, minimalism or simplicity are good heuristics for obviousness, but do not mistake the means for the end.
↗Conversational Interfaces: the Good, the Ugly & the Billion-Dollar Opportunitylg.substack.com
-
Their wordsThe technology powering ChatGPT had already launched prior to November 30th, 2022. It was just wrapped in a different interface. Very few people paid attention. Why did ChatGPT explode in popularity? Because of its obvious chat interface, which everyone intuitively already knew how to use it.
↗Conversational Interfaces: the Good, the Ugly & the Billion-Dollar Opportunitylg.substack.com
-
Their wordsThe problem with a blank chat box on a blank page is that it violates the first rule of a high-quality user experience: it isn’t obvious what I can do.
↗Conversational Interfaces: the Good, the Ugly & the Billion-Dollar Opportunitylg.substack.com