← Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
From managing people to managing AI: The leadership skills everyone needs now | Julie Zhuo (Facebook VP, Sundial CEO, The Making of a Manager author)
01:36:24
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- [00:00]
Lenny Rachitsky
We're seeing this kind of flattening of orgs. Everyone's becoming an IC again.
- [00:04]
Julie Zhu
It used to be okay, I don't have the skills to do 10 different jobs, but now with AI allows me to do many of those jobs myself. We need to dissolve the boundaries of these traditional roles and call ourselves builders. I'd love for us to get to a world where that's the title.
- [00:19]
Lenny Rachitsky
I also just saw a stat Google let go of so many of their middle managers.
- [00:22]
Julie Zhu
Management is still really critical. You have a North Star, 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. Used to be people, but now it's basically models. And different models have different strengths. You kind of have to assemble the adventures so that you can use the.
- [00:37]
Right tools for the right purposes.
- [00:39]
Lenny Rachitsky
What do you feel is the biggest change in the role in life of a manager these days?
- [00:44]
Julie Zhu
It's always been manager's job to manage change. I just think the rate of change is accelerating. Today. Management is really about this idea of be sturdy while being flexible. So I think about this metaphor a lot of the willow tree. It can survive a lot of storms.
- [00:57]
Disasters, et cetera, but it's also very flexible.
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Lenny Rachitsky
You have such an interesting trajectory from being head of design to now being obsessed with data and analytics.
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Julie Zhu
You want to diagnose with data and treat with design. Data is not a tool that's going to tell you what you should build. I don't actually think a lot of the fast growing companies are using data.
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Well at this point.
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Traditionally things just didn't grow that fast. These companies are totally getting by on just good instincts and good vibes. But what always happens is eventually things stop growing.
- [01:27]
Lenny Rachitsky
Today my guest is Julie Zhu. Julie was my first ever guest on this podcast which I recorded over three years ago.
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So this is a very special conversation.
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As I've shared many times before in other places.
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Julie's newsletter, the Looking Glass was the.
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Inspiration for my newsletter and basically led to everything that I do now. If you're not familiar with Julie, she was the longtime head of design for the Facebook app used by over 3 billion people. She's also the author of the best selling and very important book the Making of a Manager. And most recently she started her own company, Sundial, which is an AI powered analyst used by companies like OpenAI, Gamma and Character AI. Julie is one of the most thoughtful.
- [02:11]
And insightful product leaders that I've ever.
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Come across and she's also got one of the most interesting perspectives on product building. Having worked at a mega large corp like Meta as head of Design, and now as a founder at a tiny startup that's all about using data to help you make decisions, it's really rare for someone to have this spectrum of experiences. In our conversation, we talk about how learning to be a great manager directly translates to learning how to use AI tools extremely well. Which specific skills will become more valuable.
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In the next couple of years.
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Her most valuable and timeless advice for new managers why she's not hiring product managers at her startup her simple heuristic for knowing when to use data and when to use intuition in making decisions there's something in this episode for everyone. And if you enjoy this podcast, don't forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube. It helps tremendously. And if you become an annual subscriber of my newsletter, you get 15 incredible products for free for an entire year, including lovable replid, bolt, N8M, linear, superhuman, descript, Whisper Flow, Gamma, Perplexity, Warp, Granola, Magic Patterns, Raycast, Chapierd, and Mobin. Head on over to lennysnewsletter.com and click product Pass.
- [03:24]
With that, I bring you Julie Zhu.
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This episode is brought to you by Mercury. I've been banking with Mercury for years and honestly I can't imagine banking any other way.
- [03:35]
At this point.
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I switched from Chase and holy moly, what a difference. Sending wires, tracking spend, giving people on my team access to move money around. So freaking easy. Where most traditional banking websites and apps are clunky and hard to use, Mercury is meticulously designed to be an intuitive and simple experience. And Mercury brings all the ways that you use money into a single product, including credit cards, invoicing, bill pay, reimbursements for your teammates, and capital. Whether you're a funded tech startup looking for ways to pay contractors and earn yield on your idle cash or or an agency that needs to invoice customers and keep them current, or an e commerce brand that needs to stay on top of cash flow and excess capital. Mercury can be tailored to help your business perform at its highest level. See what over 200,000 entrepreneurs love about Mercury. Visit mercury.com to apply online in 10 minutes. Mercury is a fintech, not a bank. Banking services provided through Mercury's FDIC insured partner banks. For more details, check out the show Notes. Today's episode is brought to you by dx, the developer intelligence platform designed by leading researchers. To thrive in the AI era, organizations need to adapt quickly, but many Organization leaders struggle to answer pressing questions like which tools are working? How are they being used? What's actually driving value? DX provides the data and insights that leaders need to navigate this shift. With DX, companies like Dropbox, Booking.com, adyen, and Intercom get a deep understanding of how AI is providing value to their developers and what impact AI is having on engineering productivity. To learn more, visit DX's website at getdx.com Lenny that's getdx.com Lenny.
- [05:22]
Julie, thank you so much for being here and.
- [05:24]
Welcome back to the podcast.
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Julie Zhu
Thank you, Lenny. I'm so excited to be here. I've been looking forward to this all week. I love your podcast. I love where you've taken it since our very first conversation. And I'm super excited to have a.
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Fun and engaging chat.
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Lenny Rachitsky
Can you believe that first episode? The very first episode of this podcast was over three years ago at this point. Holy shit.
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Julie Zhu
I'm not sure you had that fire in the background back then.
- [05:50]
Lenny Rachitsky
So, funny enough, I don't know how many people have noticed this Easter egg that I stuck with in that first studio. I was just watching the episode. I had like this funny little mirror I don't know if I had in the first episode with a fireplace that was showing up in that mirror because the mirror was showing something stupid. And so I've just kind of kept this fireplace across every studio I've moved across in my. In my various places.
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Julie Zhu
I even remember when we chatted, video was like kind of a newer thing. You're like, we'll record it, but like, it's really about the audio. And now we moved into the video era.
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Lenny Rachitsky
So as you were saying that, I realized my fire was broken, so I just had to turn that on. So we just cut a little piece. Yeah, that fire was my little fun Easter egg for myself. And I don't think anyone's ever realized this.
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Julie Zhu
It's very cozy.
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I love it.
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Lenny Rachitsky
That's the idea. I was actually just looking at the stats. So since that first episode, this podcast has done over 20 million downloads. It's approaching 30 million downloads.
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Julie Zhu
It's really incredible. I think it is a testament to.
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Just your curiosity and how much you really care about the craft of building great products and sharing that with the world. And I know I listen to your podcast and read your newsletter. My team does. Or constantly sharing things from all of the amazing speakers that you've had. So thank you for doing this.
- [07:01]
Lenny Rachitsky
My pleasure. I really appreciate that. So the reason we are chatting again, three years later is you're re releasing your incredible book, the Making of a Manager. I've got it right here. You've sold a bazillion copies. It's been on every list I've seen. You're releasing the paperback version, you're adding some chapters. I guess first of all, just how do you feel on reflecting back on the the success of this book?
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Julie Zhu
It honestly went beyond my expectations, so.
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I'm super happy with it. My big motivation to write it was, I think largely because I felt if I had to write this thing, I was likely going to become a better manager. And that was actually a huge part of it.
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Because thinking about and writing something, you know, I've been blogging for a long.
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Time and I know that part of.
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My process is when I really sit down to try and put down everything I feel and write, write letters to myself, it really helps me. And so that was honestly a huge motivation. I hoped that it would go out there and it would sell some books. I was thinking about that maybe for people who grew up in companies like mine, like Facebook, high scale Silicon Valley, it might resonate. I couldn't have expected that it would have much wider reach than that. And that's been really awesome. And just how many people will tell.
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Me things like, I thought I was.
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The only one who felt this way, but this book made me realize that, hey, these are very normal feelings. And that's certainly how I felt just stumbling through and feeling like an imposter for so many years. And so it really is very gratifying to hear that from readers.
- [08:29]
Lenny Rachitsky
I feel like it's the modern day High Output Management. That's the book that's been mentioned most on this podcast and it feels like this is just like a modern version. I feel like that book is actually out of date in a lot of ways, so I can see why people are really drawn to it. And this is a great segue to the first area I want to spend some time on, which is it feels like a lot of the skills you learn as a manager translate to being really good with AI and using AI tools really well. And I want to talk through a few trends that I want to get your take on that relate to this general theme. The first is it feels like just everyone is going to become a manager in the near future because of agents being so integrated into our workflows. There's this agentic society that requires that we're coming to and it feels like the same skills of being a manager make you really good working with agents, just thoughts on, on that and where you think that's going to go.
- [09:20]
Julie Zhu
I 100% believe that and agree with that, which is that management is just about, in my mind, having an outcome. So you want to get something done. That's the thing. You have a North Star, 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. And typically when we talk about management in traditional settings, we talk about the resources being people and getting the right talent and making sure that they're, you know, you've got the, like assemble the adventure so you've got the right mix of skills that you need. The second lever is around, okay, what's the purpose? Does everyone know what they're supposed to do with their talents? Like, do we have a goal? Do we have a purpose? And then the third thing is process, which is how should all of these different people and tools come together? And these are still the fundamentals of working with agentic systems. Like you still need a goal, you need to be very clear about what the outcome is. And you have to understand the strengths 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. And so you kind of have to get to know it like, you know, develop an intuition for it so that you can use the right tools for the right purposes. And I mean we talk about agents, but we also talk about like, what are the tools that agents have access to. So you still have to make decisions around that. And then there's of course process, which is how you do it. Now. Now I think with better and better models, perhaps the agents get smarter so they can deal with higher and higher levels of figuring out how to do something. But I think it's still very important for us to be able to provide the right context, provide the right high.
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Level instruction so that we get what we want. So really it's the same principles, and.
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I absolutely agree with you that more and more of us are going to.
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Have to double down on these skills.
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To be able to use these tools very effectively.
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Lenny Rachitsky
So along those lines, I have your book right here. You have this list of A manager's job is to build a team that works well together, support members in reaching their career goals and create processes to get work done smoothly and efficiently. Which is basically exactly what you just said. Interestingly, that middle bullet is the part you don't have to worry about anymore. With agents, you don't have to worry about their career development and progress.
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Julie Zhu
And that's true. That's true. Though some people do joke that if we don't treat our agents nice, what's going to happen when AGI comes? And, you know, maybe it still still.
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Might benefit us to be kind.
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Lenny Rachitsky
I'm one of those people that says thank you to the waymo when I leave and just like, thanks chatgpt when I'm in voice mode. Just like, thank you. That was really helpful. So along these lines, I know there's a lot of ways to go here, but just in terms of skills that are important to a manager, which do you think are most valuable to develop in working with agents in AI systems? I think about things like clarity, communication, just like, what comes to mind when you think about, like, here's the things you want to double down on as you're learning to be manager, that will also help you be really good at AI tooling and working with agents.
- [12:16]
Julie Zhu
I think the first is defining the goal and defining the outcome and being really, really crystal clear on what does success look, look like. I mean, there's obviously lots and lots.
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Of, like, if you ask a company.
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To do this, we'll know that this.
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Is challenging for humans. Right? I think a lot of times when you talk about, you know, why is.
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Alignment so difficult at a big company, it often comes down to this question, which is different people may have different pictures of what success looks like.
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And even if I describe in human words, oh, you know, Lenny, I want to build this product and it's going to be amazing, or, you know, this podcast episode which you asked me, well, lots of people to hear it and.
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Take away things that's very general, like.
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How do we get even more specific.
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So that we know without question whether.
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We'Ve hit it or not.
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This is actually a really, really difficult problem. It's a different difficult question for us because again, we tend to think very high level. So figuring out how to boil it down so that an agent can really understand what success and failure looks like is a lot of the game. And I think this also relates to things like, well, that's why we have to write evals, and that's why they're so important, because they're helping us understand what is the objective criteria. And these days I work in data and my company is all about trying.
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To automate data analysis.
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And the forever question goes, the whole point of data and the whole point of metrics and KPIs is we're trying to put a little bit More of an objective measure or get as crystal clear as possible about what success looks like.
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And I think it's really an art.
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More than it is like a science. But that's like the first thing.
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I think if you're really unclear about.
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What success looks like, the prompt, you're probably not going to get the most amazing work. I think that's true for managing teams and it's very much true for managing AIs.
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Lenny Rachitsky
Okay, so let me actually flip this on you and talk about another trend that we're seeing, which is this kind of flattening of orgs, managers being let go. Everyone's becoming an IC again. I just had the CEO of Airtable on the podcast and his, his whole shtick was that CEOs have to become ICs again. They have. He's coding more than he's ever coded again. And his feeling is you have to know what's possible by being in the weeds in order to figure out what your product should be. I also just saw a stat that Google let go of so many of their middle managers of smaller teams. It's just like this flattening trend. So do we even need managers? I guess is one question in the future and then just thoughts on how this will play out.
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Julie Zhu
Yeah.
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So I think the real promise and magic of AI that we're seeing in the workplace is that it leads us to. Each individual is far more empowered. So it used to be okay. I don't have the skills to do 10 different jobs, so I need to supplement by hiring people to do these jobs. I need someone who's really good at design, I need someone who's really good at coding. I need someone who's really good at data analysis and. And then I'll assemble that team. But now with AI and my companion, it's like, wait a second, AI makes allows me to do many of those jobs myself. Now I'm not going to do them at the, it's called the Ph.D. or the highest 1%, 10% level. But if I was, you know, at the 0 or 10th percentile, it can certainly get me even today, very quickly, up to like the 60th, 70th in terms of what the state of the art is. And I think that that unlocks so many doors. And 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. So in the past, again, we would have a traditional team, engineers, product manager, designer, researcher, data scientist. And I Think now the teams can look more like, well, it's just two people. And again, they could be any of these traditional disciplines. But the key thing is they can now use AI to help themselves do a lot of the things that the other folks used to be able to do. So in some ways, we can drop all of these different role distinctions and call ourselves builders. I think that's sort of the most general purpose way of thinking about what we can all be. We can all be builders. We can all be builders. And I'd love for us to get to the world where that's just.
- [16:29]
That's like the title.
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Lenny Rachitsky
That's funny. That's the term I've been actually using more and more. I used to orient this podcast as a newsletter on product managers, and then I started using just product to be a little more broad. And now I'm actually using that term builder. So. And I love that term because it's exactly what you're saying. And this is very much a theme that comes up often in these conversations. More and more, just the lines are blurring. I'm curious at your company, how does that look like? What are you doing differently? What are you seeing on the ground within your company that maybe would be different from a few years ago?
- [17:01]
Julie Zhu
So we have eliminated more roles. For example, we thought we would need a bunch of product managers. It's turned out that actually if you don't have a product manager, I know this might be going against a little bit of the ethos of Puerto Here we Go, where Leti started. But I 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. And I think that in doing so, you know, again, where we want to be polite, we want to respect everyone's lanes, I think that's a missed opportunity for that engine. You know, if I'm the engineer to be like, wait a second, I should probably focus a lot too. Like, I need to understand and have an opinion about what to build or what the user experiences. And so we found that if we actually make teams smaller and we kind of even, like in the past, you know, pre, like, just have fewer of these, it allowed everyone to be like, oh, wait, we don't have product manager on the team. Okay, so communications up to me figuring out how we get greatest value to users is something that is now strictly in my charter. And so that's why I'm such a big fan of like, we can make teams smaller and we can eliminate these lines.
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Sure.
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Again, there's still, I'm not trying to say like everyone has to do everything. We still can respect the fact that you might be much better at this particular skill than me, but it's less.
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About the role and it's more about the specific context that we're in.
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And I find that whenever you have teams and you empower them to be able to take more action on their specific context rather than having these higher level rules or policies or like this is how it's supposed to be, then you get better, better work, you get.
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Faster work and you get happier employees.
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Because, you know, people feel like they actually can, you know, have the power to create the thing that they want.
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Lenny Rachitsky
That's really interesting that just that constraint of not having a PM makes the engineer realize they're not going to wait for someone else to do it. They have to figure it out. The obvious kind of trick there is they have to be good at, good at this. It's a very different job from engineering to be really good at articulating. Here's the problem we're going to solve, here's why it's important that we're solving, here's how we're going to prioritize everything we're thinking about. Here's how do we get alignment. Is there something you do differently when you're hiring these engineers, knowing you're going to probably not hire a PM and, and just that feels really hard to hire for someone that's really good at all these things.
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Julie Zhu
It is true, and I'm not trying.
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To say again that everyone needs to be good at everything.
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I don't think that's very realistic.
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I do think, for example, if we were going to create a team and we're going to have a couple engineers and none of them are very good at thinking through product requirements or what the user angle is, we probably do.
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Need to supplement the team with somebody with that skill set.
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Right. And that might be a designer or that might be another engineer who's really good at that, or that might be a traditional product manager or even sometimes a data analyst who's really good at. So that skill is still important and the team still needs to have that skill, otherwise it's probably not going to produce the best outcome. But I like to think of it as like, what are the skills that that are needed for this and can we now find a couple people. But it doesn't mean we just automatically go to that script of need a pm, need a designer, need three engineers need, need that. You know, another example for us is like even thinking about front end, back end engineering and used to be like, oh, some people are front engineers from a back end. So if you have a project and it's got some front end, some back end, the shortcut is like I need one of these and one of these and that's how it's going to go. But if you say, look, you're an engineer, you're a builder, you can, this has a little bit of front end. But you know what, you can probably figure that out, like use AI to help you figure it out. You know, get obviously someone who's a specialist to review the code or to give you some high level guidance on things, but just do it. And ever since we started to implement that as well, we see, yeah, again a little bit of, you know, you have to kind of invest a little bit in the beginning so people are, are not as comfortable, they have to learn. So you initially things take longer, takes a little bit of extra time. Right. Versus if you did slot in a.
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Front end specialist and this is a.
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Front end project, it probably would have.
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Gone a little bit shorter.
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But in the long run that investment really pays off because now you have a lot more people who are again, a little more well rounded and can take on many more pieces just on.
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Their own and then in specific scenarios.
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Oh, this is super front end heavy. Sure. Let's still bring in somebody who's more specialized in that particular skill.
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Lenny Rachitsky
I love that you've had the experience of working at a mega large company at Meta and now you're building your own startup that's small. And in the middle of this trend of just staying very small and staying really lean and just everyone doing more things. It's so cool that you're experiencing that. So a couple questions there. Just which functions are you seeing most accelerated with all these AI tools? Is it engineering? Is it something else? And then are there tools that have been most helpful to you, just AI tools for folks to be like, oh, I should check it out. Like I'm guessing cursor but curious if there's anything else.
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Julie Zhu
Yeah, certainly engineering, engineering is one that.
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We, I mean most of our company is engineers, so that's the one that.
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We focused on a bunch.
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I certainly do see more people also prototyping things and so it's not Just we have not, we have like two designers, but we also see engineers. We have one, we have a team that's called product science, which is this interesting blend of, you can think about it like a forward deployed person who has a lot of data analysis background and is kind of playing a customer success role and also kind of playing like a product role. And you see them starting to take on building more prototypes or getting into some of the engineering. And so it's really lovely to see that blend of everyone can do a little bit of everything else and we're all encouraging each other. The other thing that recently we've also been trying to do a lot more is just obviously we say, hey engineer, now you can do analysis. And their first thing is like, oh, I don't really know analysis.
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This is where ChatGPT comes in and.
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It'S like, well, traditionally we would say, well, I have to learn that from a human. I have to ask this person. And now I'm going to take a bunch of their time because I want them to explain everything to me. And in fact, I think these days ChatGPT or these other AI tools are better teachers. I find that we tend to maybe not use them quite as much, you know, just for the purposes of accelerating our education or even going through something. Like sometimes what I'll do is I'll find a curriculum online and you know, if you like take a course, it'll be like this, whatever, 12 week curriculum and I'll just feed it into ChatGPT.
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And I'll say, help me customize a.
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Program for me, you know, using the ways that I like to learn.
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Like, I am a person who really needs examples.
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I need a lot of like, explain, like I'm five, give me an analogy. And I know some other people on.
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My team, they're like, I don't get.
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Like these examples don't make any sense. Like we've, we're different types of learners.
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And so the idea of like a.
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You know, a tool that personalizes learning for each of us really helps us, I think, accelerate and just learn these skills much faster than before. So 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. Just because I know whenever I talk to people, we just, we forget, like, we don't, we don't think that, like.
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Oh wait, yes, we could be doing.
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That and just sitting down and probably in 30 minutes or an hour, learn so much faster than what we used.
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To be able to do before.
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Lenny Rachitsky
That's such an interesting point. There's like these tools that are in the just in time helping you move faster. And then there's. But you also need to learn how to do something like to some foundational lessons. What's an area that your team did that like, what did they work on learning?
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Julie Zhu
So I'll give you an example.
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I was just talking to an engineer this morning and he's written a bunch of these algorithms. So one of the things our company does is we're trying to automate data analysis. So one of the things we have to do is obviously understand the best practices. Like if there's a type of question, hey, what features are really the ones that people pay for? We need to kind of figure out what is the right analysis to do.
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And so the engineer was saying to.
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Me, you know, Julie, I feel like I really understand the how. Like I know the algorithms, I know we do root cause analysis, like how we do that. But what I don't really understand is why or when this would be most useful. Like in what context in a company would this company come up? Because he's an engineer, he hasn't done that job of being like a PM or an executive that asks these types of questions. And that was like the perfect thing where like, yeah, you know, traditionally you might have asked someone, but this is more general purpose, like there's so much resources in the world on the Internet about it. This is like the perfect type of question where if you just talk to ChatGPT, it's probably going to give you a much better answer and allow you to go deeper. And a secondary thing we've been learning too is this idea of almost like As a using ChatGPT, it's like your tester learning. So it explains a bunch of things. And so what I often like to do is like, okay, I read this. So this means I'm trying to explain back what I heard right. So does this mean, is the right way to think about it, that this is kind of like this analogy and ChatGPT will critique me? Yes, that is right. Or no, you didn't quite get that right. Like, in fact, and it always tries to say it nicely, this is a funny part. I'll be like, that's close. And then eventually it's like you were completely wrong just in the style, but like it helps so much because it's interactive. And so we can really test whether we really understand the concept by trying to retell it back in our own way.
- [26:40]
Lenny Rachitsky
It's incredible just how many ways all this AI breakthrough is helping us advance and do more and learn more and become better. I know there's some downsides, but this is incredible. So many ways of getting better and faster. I want to spend a little more time on this data analysis stuff. So again, you have such an interesting trajectory from working at a big company to starting your own small company, from being head of design to now being obsessed with data and analytics. So let me spend a little time there. What do AI companies that have kind of figured out how to use AI for data analysis and data work doing differently? What are people missing and sleeping on in terms of getting better at working with data? And let me just ask. At this point it feels like we're almost working through. Here's all the blockers to a team moving forward. There's like waiting for the PM to write the PRD and then there's like waiting for the data scientists to give you answers. Analysis. So this is like another really cool unblock that every team member will have.
- [27:38]
Julie Zhu
So your first question was, how are a bunch of AI companies using data? So the funny thing, my funny answer to this is I don't actually think.
- [27:45]
A lot of the fast growing companies.
- [27:48]
Are using data well at this point.
- [27:51]
And the main reason why is because traditionally things just didn't grow that fast.
- [27:57]
And so, you know, if you got.
- [27:58]
To 100 million users, your company has probably been around for a while. And if your company's been around for a while, you've had time to set up things like logging and you've hired a growth team at that point and you've hired a data team and they've like done a bunch of work to log an instrument and then transform the data. And like we've talked about like what, what is the observability for our business and you just usually had years to build and develop that because of the rate of growth. And so today we see companies that are growing insane and there's still about 10 people or two people or however many people, but they've got hundreds of millions in ARR and hundreds of millions of users. And you know what, they don't actually have all of that infrastructure that logging and all to be able to truly do data analysis. So I would say that these companies are totally getting by on just good instincts and good vibes. And we see that right, like you don't really need a data analysis to sometimes make something that works. But I think what Data helps us do is it just. In my mind, it sort of is like helping us reflect back what is really reality. And so of course if AR is going awesome, you know, great, keep doing what you're doing. But what always happens is eventually things stop growing. Growth does not happen forever. And usually when growth stops, everyone has this question of like, what's going on? Why did it happen? And then you start to be able to see the power of if you've, if you've instrumented everything very well and you have a very good observability model for your business, it's much easier to start to get into the root cause. It'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 key levers are, then you will be scrambling. And at that point that's usually when people start investing a ton in data.
- [29:53]
So I wouldn't say that we're do.
- [29:55]
A lot of these hot companies, you know, are, are, are quite there yet. But what I also think is a trend is that every time there's a new technological shift, we actually have to change the way that we think about analysis, has to answer the questions that we have. And if technology changes or context changes, we need new methodologies of analysis. So for example, when mobile came to the forefront, looking at sessions or sessions per day or time spent on mobile.
- [30:25]
Or length of sessions became something that was important for us to understand. Are people getting value in this new medium? I think that's the same with what we have today.
- [30:35]
Conversational analytics is totally different. Used to be, let's say in the Google world, right? I knew you were interested in shopping. If you click the shopping tab, I.
- [30:44]
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. You know, if I worked on any of these LLM, I would say like.
- [30:59]
One of the, probably the biggest questions.
- [31:01]
Is, hey, what use cases are growing or what use cases are shrinking? And that's much harder to tell today.
- [31:08]
Because it's not just clicks on tabs or pages. It's like we have to probably use an LLM to, or a machine learning.
- [31:15]
Model to bucket user intent. We probably have to ask questions like, is the flow going really well in conversations? You know, like a, like if I just ask one question and I don't.
- [31:27]
Go back and forth, like, did the user get value?
- [31:30]
Right? It's always trying to get back to like, we're trying to figure out if this was a good experience, but now it's, it's like we need to actually invent new methodologies to help us analyze that.
- [31:40]
Lenny Rachitsky
Yeah, I think there, the question is always like, with conversation, do you want it to be a long conversation? You want it to be a short conversation? Like, what's the right answer? What's better? I had the head of ChatGPT on the podcast, Nick Turley, and turns out one of the ways they found the most common use cases early on was watching TikTok comments and things going viral on TikTok after they launched. About that. Okay, so I want to come back to this really interesting, unusual path that you took from being a head of design at Facebook. You're an inspiration to so many designers now. You spend your time on a data startup obsessed with data. I don't know. Classically, designers aren't the biggest fans of experiments and data and making decisions based on data. When you look at designers and hear designers kind of push back on, like, no, we don't want to be super data driven. We want to, we, we know better than. We have a sense of what's beautiful and great and intuition, all these things. What, what do you think designers are, are missing when, when they feel that and say that, when they, they're afraid of writing experiments and data and kind of want to push that out.
- [32:47]
Julie Zhu
There's one phrase that my co founder and I would always discuss with us amongst ourselves very early on, in which we shared with like, a lot of.
- [32:55]
The companies that we work with, which is what you really want is you.
- [32:57]
Want to diagnose with data and treat with design. So data is not a tool that's going to tell you what you should.
- [33:05]
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. But it can tell you if you have a problem and where that problem or opportunity might be. But you still need to go back and undergo a very creative process to figure out what's the best way to solve that. So that's the first thing I would say is this framework of like, data helps you figure out what's actually happening. What do people like? What are they engaging with, what not right. It's just gives you a story that better reflects reality. Because again, we all have stories. We're like, oh my God, my company's amazing, People love us, blah, blah. That's a story I want to believe. But reality may be a different picture. And so what data is trying to do is capture reality. And by the way, I don't think of data just as like it's AB test and it's quantitative things we can measure. It's to me, data is also. Well, what did people put onto TikTok and which things went viral and what are they saying in the Twitterverse, or X verse I guess is what it's called now. And, and, and what are, you know, and if you do a customer interview, like what? Like that's still all data. It's just, is a little harder to distill and quantify. Although now with AI, you know, we have better, better tools for synthesizing. So that's all data in my mind. And it's just all trying to help us understand what is really happening. What is the phenomenon that's happening in reality and how do we understand it? You still have to go and invent and create and dream and there's no formula and there's no science that will tell you exactly how you're going to make a hit. You can experiment, which has, allows you to try more things maybe and more rigorously understand what that does. In the short term, you're going to have to. It's all very contextualized, right? Because a B test don't tell you what will happen in the very long run. And that's still, again, it's all still data. You still have to synthesize and figure out what to do. So that's this thing I'll say diagnose with data and treat with design. I think the second thing I will usually tell designers about is I find that sometimes, maybe it's the, let's call it the false precision of numbers that we kind of fall into, right? Because 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?
- [35:30]
Is also an interpretation and is an.
- [35:33]
Is an art, not a science.
- [35:34]
It's just that sometimes I think we.
- [35:35]
Can give ourselves this feeling and I get it, like we, sometimes there's this instinct to want to control things and we want everything to be buttoned up and we want to know that if we did abc, everything will be great, our careers are going to be awesome. Our product's going to rocket ship. And I think designers are rightly often pushing back and saying no. The reality is like, this stuff is ambiguous and there's uncertainty and we can.
- [35:59]
Never know for sure.
- [36:00]
And I think all that is quite true. So 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 a b test your way into it. So that's. I fundamentally believe that, but I don't think we should throw the baby out with the bathwater. I think there's actually, you know, it's not either or it's not like data or design. It's like these are just tools for us to use.
- [36:21]
And I would say every amazing designer.
- [36:24]
That I've ever met is absolutely obsessed with trying to get a better understanding of reality.
- [36:29]
They want to know what users really think, they want to know what they're really doing.
- [36:33]
If they could read every user's minds, that's like the, the thing we would all want, right, as a designer, is like, if I could just know what everyone is thinking, feeling every time they use it, my life would be a lot easier because then I would be able to build better and better things. And so that's what it's trying to help us do.
- [36:49]
It isn't perfect. No metric is going to tell you.
- [36:52]
Whatever we hope that it can in terms of the true certainty and precision, but it doesn't mean we can't use it to better our product development.
- [37:03]
Lenny Rachitsky
I was going to say exactly what you just said, which is every great designer that I've worked with was obsessed with data and the most leaning into the data versus designers that are just like, nah, I think I'm going to, I have a sense of what's right and why would we let that tell us what to do? And to your point, it's not going to tell you what to do, it'll tell you where opportunities arise. Let me take us back to the management chat and maybe just let me ask something broad. What do you feel is the biggest change in the role and day to day work and life of a manager these days with the rise of AI?
- [37:35]
Julie Zhu
I think that managing change, it's always been manager's job to manage change and there's always the chaos of what, what's going on. I just think the rate of change is accelerating and we've seen that over the last couple of decades. And so I find that there's just a great deal more uncertainty that people have about things like we all you know, where is AI going to be in two years from now? I don't know. Who really knows? Right? And so, you know, are we going to have AGI in five years? That kind of changes a lot about the landscape. Not to mention, I think there's quite a lot of fear that many organizations are feeling. You know, it's like, if my career has always been in design and now these tools are getting better and better at what I'm doing, then holy shit, what happens to my career and my future? And do I need to pivot? Do I need to learn different things? And so it's this change, it's this feeling of uncertainty. And I think a lot of times managers have to deal with that in addition to what you were saying before, which is they also have to learn these new skills, which is managing AI and managing kind of like these more powerful tools in their arsenal of trying to get things done. So that is very different, I think, than maybe, you know, 10, 20, 30 years ago. And so I think that the skills that become more important are obviously communication, feedback, compassion, but just being able to work with humans and to have them understand that, like, yes, we are in a state of change. I think every leader has to do this now. Every startup founder that I know, every CEO, is, how do you land this message that things are changing and we need to be very, like, we need to be very open to change. If we go and stick to our old ways, we're probably going to get left behind, our product's going to get left behind. Even our way of doing things is going to be left behind. So we need to change, right? We need to change our product and we need to change the way that we work. As we all talked about, in terms of smaller teams, more nimble, blah, blah, blah. Um, but at the same time, it's like, how, how do we do that in a way that doesn't just freak everyone out? It's like, ah, it's chaos. Everything's changing. Like, so, So I think about this metaphor a lot of, like the willow tree, which is like, the willow tree is a very sturdy tree. You know, it's, it's, it, it, it can survive a lot of storms, disasters.
- [39:55]
Et cetera, but it's also very flexible.
- [39:58]
Like, the branches are very, very flexible. And 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. But I think that's like, at least When I even go into me, like. Like, be like the willow tree, Julie. Just imagine the willow tree. And like, try and channel that as. As the. The kind of feeling of. Of what it is that we're trying to do together.
- [40:23]
Lenny Rachitsky
This reminds me of a couple things from other guests. I had Mark Benioff on the podcast, and I asked him, just, how do you deal with all this change? Things are. It's like agents now. It was. I don't know, there's AGI coming, as you said, just like, how do you survive? There's. And his advice is just. He's like, I'm always just like, good. This is great. This is what we want. This is exciting. We have so much opportunity. It's just not boring. We can always reinvent. And he's always embracing what. This is good. And I just. I'll never forget the way he responded to that.
- [40:55]
Julie Zhu
I think if you don't think it's good, it's kind of a painful way to live. It'll be very, very difficult over these next. So I do think that all things be equal. Lean into it. Like, if you can wake up every day and see it as opportunity and excitement rather than fear. Again, they're all flip sides of the same coin. But I think if we can lean more into, what could it be while recognizing that the other side does exist and it's still there. And I think of managers who try to pretend like it isn't there, like it's all good, no one's upset, et cetera. There's something also missing about just addressing and being able to be like, yeah, it's hard. Change is hard. We're probably going to get upset. We're going to have some chaos. Like, this is going to happen. But we will work through it because we're going to be flexible and we're going to be able to put our eyes on the big picture of what is possible, which is exciting.
- [41:45]
Lenny Rachitsky
There's another quote that stuck that came up as you were talking. I forget who it was exactly. Maybe Kevin Wheel, maybe Mike Krieger. They said that this is the most normal things will be ever. Like, it will only get weirder. And I think giving people that sense of like, okay, just enjoy this normal, because this is going to be only weirder because we'll at least give people an expectation, real expectations of where things might be going.
- [42:10]
Julie Zhu
Yes, yes.
- [42:11]
Lenny Rachitsky
What a time to be alive.
- [42:12]
Julie Zhu
What time?
- [42:15]
Lenny Rachitsky
Okay, let me zoom out even further and chat about. I want to ask you, just outside of AI management, in many ways, is Unchanged. It's still a lot of the same work, managing people, helping them be successful, producing great work. What are just some of the, I'd say maybe most timeless, most important lessons that you think managers, especially new managers, still don't totally understand? Need to hear more. What are just some that come to mind and then we'll see where this goes.
- [42:43]
Julie Zhu
The first thing that comes to mind is the importance of managing yourself and understanding yourself. This was chapter five of my book.
- [42:52]
It's called Managing Yourself. In fact, when I wrote it, I kind of wanted it to be chapter one. And then my publisher's like, well, maybe you should get into some of the tactical. Like people don't necessarily think managing other people or managing team starts with them. But I really do fundamentally believe this because I think all of us are, of course, like any human being, we have things that we're strong at, we have things that we're weak at. And I am a very big believer that every strength is, 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 a hundred percent. In fact, I think one of the most interesting concepts that we can like or frameworks for myself, and also, even this is also kind of like a data framework concept is this concept of dimensionality. So what dimensionality means is like, you're a human being, but we can kind of look at you in infinite dimensions. There is, for example, how good is Lenny at throwing an ax? That's one dimension.
- [43:49]
Lenny Rachitsky
There's pretty good.
- [43:51]
Julie Zhu
How good is Lenny at being a podcast moderator? Fantastic.
- [43:57]
Lenny Rachitsky
So, so, okay, thank you.
- [43:58]
Julie Zhu
How good is Lenny at doing a zero to one type of project in the AI space? Right. So again, just can think about these as infinite dimensions. And the reality is each of our profiles is very unique. It's like a fingerprint, you know, so for you, it's like these are all these areas that you're really great at, you know, much better, like in the top 1%. And then there's some areas where in the top 10%, then there's some areas where you're like kind of average. And then there's some dimensions in which you're worse than average compared to other people. And that's just true for all of us. And what I like about that is therefore, if you, if you take that as the model right things that then you, you realize that none of these dimensions are you entirely. So we can be, you know, I can make a comment like, Lenny, your ax throwing really could use some improvement. And ideally, you're not like Julie is saying, I'm a bad person. I'm a. My identity is at risk. Right, because it's just one dimension of who you are. But what happens sometimes is that we can get very attached to certain dimensions because we start to think that that's who we are. And I think managers can do that. And clearly individuals on their teams. And when that happens, it starts to get very difficult to have, I think, more objective conversations about, okay, what can you get better at? What can you get worse at? And so I say all this because I think this framework, for me at least, and many people that I've talked to, has helped them realize that somebody can give you feedback or you can be maybe not great at certain dimensions. We can have room to improve. And that's not who you are because you are all of these infinite dimensions in one, and none of them is representative of your true worth as an individual. I am a big believer that we are all beautiful and worthy. And sure, we have all of these skills, and yes, we want to improve those skills, but it does not speak to whether we are worthy or not by saying whether we are strong or weak in these skills. And so I think if you can take that and really internalize that, then you can look at yourself a little bit more objectively as a manager, and you can realize that there are areas where you're going to be really strong. There are areas where you have biases, and often they are one and the same. So I'll give an example. People have often told me, as I would get this in my performance reviews from managers in the past, like, hey, Julie, you're really thoughtful. So when you think about something, you have, like, a way to think about it. You've clearly thought about it in depth, and you've got, like, these frameworks and all this. That's a great thing. And then on the flip side, I'll get feedback like, well, Julie, you know, you're. You don't really say a lot in a dynamic discussion. Like, you're kind of quiet and, you know, you don't really think that quickly on your feet. And what you realize is, like, these are kind of, again, two. Like, because I don't do that. And I'm not just off the cuff. That's what allows me to oftentimes be very, very thoughtful. Right? Or like that, at least, again, when I was younger, like, it's sort of. It's very clear that. That that particular weakness is also very much speaking to a particular strength, which is I am the kind of person that doesn't always have a snap judgment. I have to really think about it and internalize it and sometimes get to how I feel and then I can share it and present it in the world. And so just knowing that about me is supremely helpful. Now, doesn't mean, of course, that I can never get better at this thing. But what I often think about is mastery is where we realize that both of these we can get better at. And what we want to do is just figure out in the context what makes sense to be. So I got this feedback and I'm like, cool. One of the things I need to work on is figuring out how to be more open in person, how to speak a little bit more clearly in person. Maybe say things like, I don't know exactly how I feel about it yet, but this is what I'm thinking right now. There's still clear tactics that will allow me to be a more effective team member and to do a better job in the context of what I'm trying to do with my team. So I've tried to build those skills, but the meta skill is now being able to step back and say, okay, in certain context, it is really important that we move fast and we are decisive and we just do something. And even if it's not perfect, we just kind of have to do it. And if I struggle with that, I should realize that that's an area to improve upon. But there are other contexts in which the right thing to do is actually to take a step back and be very thoughtful and to not rush into decisions. And so that's like. So what I want to get to is not like, let's reject this strength or this weakness, but just know that that's like, where we come from. That's naturally, we might be wired in a particular way. Our growth often looks like getting better at doing the opposite, but not rejecting, again, the thing that we're good at, but rather, over time, getting to this balance where we can read the context in the situation and know, should I lean a little more thoughtful, or is this a time where I need to try and be a little more decisive and just share what I need to. What's on my mind right now.
- [49:04]
Lenny Rachitsky
I love this advice that things that we are incredible at have a downside. And oftentimes the feedback we're getting is something we're not great at. There's like a good version of that that people appreciate. And I was going to ask you, and I think you answered Most of this, but just when you got this feedback of, hey, Julie, you're not speaking enough in these meetings, you're not contributing quickly enough, it sounds like. So one option is just like, okay, cool, that's me, that's how I am. And I'm just going to solve the problem this other way and I'm just not going to change anything. What I heard you say is find opportunities where that's actually, you want to actually change that behavior even though it doesn't come naturally in specific situations where things are moving fast, I guess. Just how far do you recommend people push themselves in things they're not great at versus leaning further, further into their things, their, their strength, let's say.
- [49:55]
Julie Zhu
I think that's a really great question. So the way I think about it.
- [49:58]
Is it is very dependent on what is your goal. So for example, let's say that you are, let's even take for example, ICs versus managers. I think often about the pathway of an IC, an individual contributor, as wanting to deepen a craft. Like, you just, you love this thing and you just want to get better and better and better at this very specific skill or this craft, right? So think about in our dimension infinite, it's like you pick a couple of dimensions. Like, I just want these to be, I want to be like the top 0.01%. And that's, that's kind of the pathway of extending as an ic. Now if that's your high level goal and you're like, I want to be able, let's say your high level goal is I want to be able to do this, you know, 10 or hours a day because I love it and I want to be able to support myself doing it. Meaning I get paid and I have like a great job and I want, you know, to have a bunch of impact in the world by doing this thing right? So again, you still have goals, then you have to see, okay, does my strategy of just deepening these things is that, is there a pathway to reach my goals according to that? And if there is, awesome. Then if someone's like, hey, do you want to be a manager? You're like, nope, don't need to, because these are my goals and this pathway actually allows me to do that. But if somehow you get to a point where I don't know the skill you really want to perfect is not something that may be commercially viable in the world, that's going to somehow allow you to buy the, the big mansion that you want to buy to support your family, then I Think you have to ask yourself, okay, so if I just do this, it's not going to cut it. I might actually need to learn some of these other skills in order to be able to fulfill the job that is going to be valuable enough that.
- [51:39]
People are going to pay me a bunch of money at this certain level.
- [51:42]
So that I can afford my mansion.
- [51:44]
So I just think it has to go back to, like, what are your goals?
- [51:46]
And there are cases in which, yes, like, it supports.
- [51:50]
You'll support your goal to do this and to deepen your craft.
- [51:53]
And there are cases in which it won't. And I think it's important. It's a very individual question for each person.
- [51:58]
But what I often think suffering is is when these things are not aligned.
- [52:05]
So what you want is like the giant mansion and all of that and that. But you're like, but I also just.
- [52:09]
Want to spend all my time perfecting my egg omelette.
- [52:13]
And then you're just like in this tension place.
- [52:16]
And it's very hard to feel satisfied.
- [52:19]
And fulfilled because you're a little bit.
- [52:20]
Like, oh, why doesn't the world value my, my deep egg omelette skills?
- [52:25]
Like, okay, you can be egg omelet. You just have to, you know, maybe not do this thing. Or if you want this thing, you.
- [52:30]
May actually need to be better at just egg omelets. Like, perhaps you need to expand your repertoire of cuisines and like, go and build a Michelin star restaurant or something.
- [52:39]
Lenny Rachitsky
This is really good advice. It's not just like, definitely always work on your weaknesses or don't worry about them. It's if you need to do this thing to achieve this goal that you have, make sure you understand what your goal is. And then is this thing a thing you need to work on? For example, if you want to become a vp, you probably need to be really good in big important meetings and not being on the spot and just not, you know, waiting until everything's over and then sharing an email of your all your thoughts. That's right, yeah. For me, I actually went through a period where I was like, I do not want to get promoted. I'm so happy in this very specific role. Just like, leave me alone and in. And that path is very different from the skills I need to build to be a manager. And then things change and then, okay, now these are the things I need to work on.
- [53:17]
Julie Zhu
Yeah, I love that you knew that about yourself because I think it's so easy for, you know, a young person.
- [53:23]
To go in their careers and everyone.
- [53:24]
Is Telling them, maybe their whole family has been telling them, like, you need to get, you need to level up, you need to get paid more. You need to get that manager title, you need to get a vp. And at a certain point, I think sometimes people opt into this without knowing what they're actually signing up for. Like, what are the trade offs and is that really what you want to do? Does that really align with your passions? And of course, you know, sometimes we.
- [53:47]
Have to, again, it's like, it's a compromise for us, right?
- [53:50]
But we get to design. Like, we get to design what are our goals and what's the right pathway. And I go back to, usually when.
- [53:57]
People are unhappy, it's because these things are a little bit out of sync.
- [54:00]
Like, they want this big thing, but they don't actually, they are not actually excited about what it takes to do that thing. And therefore it's just going to be a mismatch.
- [54:10]
Lenny Rachitsky
And along those lines, it sounds like, oh, sure, I can design my life and design my role, but what I find is if you at least first of all know what you'd love and ideally do, and then at least mention that to your manager, it often is a lot more possible than you think, 100%.
- [54:27]
Julie Zhu
I think it's so important to be like, we often also have this mental model, 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. It's like, look, the manager has a job. And if you understand your manager's job, which is how to get outcomes, better outcomes from the team, and also you understand what exactly would your manager consider success for the team, it also makes it easier for you to then be like, oh, well, if I do this project, then that clearly seems like it's.
- [55:06]
Very, you know, direct path to creating value for the team. And that also is a kind of.
- [55:11]
Project that suits my skills. It's something I'm excited about. Like, you should suggest that to your manager, but the other is true, right? So you would know that if you.
- [55:18]
Actually asked your manager, what is your.
- [55:20]
Job and what do you consider success to be and what is your greatest hopes and dreams? And then you might be able to help your own career and yourself because you know that context. And conversely, if you say, hey, manager.
- [55:33]
These are my hopes and dreams, this.
- [55:35]
Is what I think I'm good at I really want to get better at this skill. You know, I really want to get that VP promotion, but I don't know what it entails. Can you tell me, like, what does it take? That's a really wonderful conversation as well, because then you'll get all of that context and then you can actually decide whether you want to do it or not. And if you want to, then ask your manager for help. Okay. If you see opportunities that are going to help me become a better presenter or increase my communication, please tell me. Even better. If you have feedback for me about communication, I want to hear it, because that's what's going to help me grow in this particular skill. And so it becomes this collaborative relationship. Much more so than this. Almost like adversarial. Like I'm trying to get you to give me a promotion and you're trying to get me to like work harder. Like it's. Yeah, like that is not a very good vibe.
- [56:27]
Lenny Rachitsky
There's a It reminds me of a guest post by Ethan Evans that I'll link to that has a really good framework for how to actually do exactly what you're talking about, called the Magic Loop, where it's kind of a framework for figuring out what to work on and how to help your manager see you're capable of stuff and earn that trust.
- [56:42]
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- [57:50]
Lines of timeless manager, especially new manager advice, you've shared a bunch. Is there anything else that you think is really important, really interesting Valuable feedback.
- [57:59]
Julie Zhu
Is one of the other topics that I am super duper passionate about. And my general impression for both myself, everyone I've worked with, is that we.
- [58:10]
Don'T value feedback enough or we don't kind of think about enough. Again, companies have these performance cycles, and so we're all like, yes, every six months we're going to go and do these reviews. That's when I'll get feedback. But feedback really, in my mind, ideally, should be like a daily practice, because the thing that matters for us in.
- [58:29]
The long run as a team is.
- [58:31]
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, 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. And so what is the best tool for us to get better? It is feedback. And what I think about in feedback is it's very similar to what we said earlier about data and metrics. It's essentially trying to put your hypotheses and test them against reality. So as an example, maybe I have this perception right now that I am a positive and engaging speaker. So I have this sense that I'm smiling and I'm very engaging and I'm telling great stories.
- [59:18]
But is that really true?
- [59:19]
I don't know. The reality is that I'm often biased. And we all have, you know, we know these, like, psychological effects, right? We're like, sometimes the Dunning Kruger effect. Like, people think they're way more expert at something than they actually are. You ask people, hey, are you better than average driver? And it's like 70 or 80% of people like, yes, I'm better than average. How could that possibly be? We have biases. And imposter syndrome is a bias on the other side. It's like me feeling, oh, I suck, I don't actually belong here. Whereas that also is a bias. Like, it may not actually be true. In fact, I might very well be here, and other people value my contribution. So we are just wildly out of sync a lot of times in our perceptions of ourselves, our strengths, our weaknesses, what's going on. And the way that we're going to understand and truly get better is we need other people to reflect back what is actually their. Their truth. And the way I think about it is like, I'm going to ask you for feedback after this podcast episode, and you're going to tell me something and what you're going to do is you're going to give me a gift because it'll be a gift of reflecting something back of what you see that I can't see. Right. Just like if I have a leaf in the back of my head, I can't see that. And so if you tell me, hey, Julie, have a leaf. Oh, wow, thank you. Okay, maybe I can get rid of the leaf or whatnot. But that is what feedback is. It is essentially reflection back. It helps us calibrate to reality and it allows me to get this information about whether or not I'm moving in the direction of my goals.
- [60:51]
Lenny Rachitsky
I love that. I completely agree. The challenge for most people, as you know, is giving feedback that people receive and don't feel defensive about and then receiving feedback and not being like, oh, no, they don't know. They don't know anything. How dare they say this about me. Could you give us maybe a tip or two for delivering feedback well and for receiving feedback well, and maybe even just like seeking how do you get more feedback? Because this all makes a lot of sense. Most of the time, people don't get any feedback.
- [61:19]
Julie Zhu
The best way, the first tip on getting feedback or delivering hard feedback is first go and actually establish that our.
- [61:27]
Relationship is one in which we value each other's contribution. We want to help each other grow.
- [61:32]
And therefore we're going to be the.
- [61:34]
Kind of people that want to give.
- [61:35]
Feedback to each other every week. So when you first start working with.
- [61:39]
Someone, don't wait until something bad has happened. Now you have to give them feedback. That's already a pressurized situation.
- [61:45]
Start by saying, hey, really excited to work with you.
- [61:49]
I feel like our best collaboration is I want you to help me get better. I think I'm good at this stuff. I'm not so good at this stuff.
- [61:54]
What about you?
- [61:55]
Okay, you think you're good at this stuff? How about we just work together and we just help each other get better at these things? And the way we're going to do that is all feedback is open. I want you to tell me everything. Ideally, you're going to then say, yeah, I want you to tell me everything. And we've already established that.
- [62:10]
Lenny Rachitsky
And this is colleagues or manager or it's like everyone.
- [62:14]
Julie Zhu
It's like people you're dating.
- [62:15]
It's like, you know your children.
- [62:16]
Like, it can be with everyone. Just establishing what kind of relationship do we want to have? I think most people want to opt into a relationship where you can be close, you can be tight with one another, you can say things to one Another and not have to hide behind. Like, I think most people will opt into it. And if you opt into it, everything gets easier down the road. So the first thing is get everyone to opt in. That, like, this is the kind of relationship that we want to have.
- [62:41]
Lenny Rachitsky
One trickle throughout that I've heard that worked really well along these same lines is asking people, would you prefer. Do you prefer feedback in the moment or do you prefer it kind of every once in everyone, every month or every week or something like that? And everyone's like, no, no, in the moment. And just like, tell me as soon as something happens. And then that gives you that freedom to just. Okay, yeah, let me give you feedback here.
- [63:00]
Julie Zhu
Yeah. So if you get people to opt in, yes, I want us to have a great relationship. I want us to help each other get better. I want feedback. That's 60% of the hard part of.
- [63:11]
Delivering difficult feedback later on.
- [63:13]
So then the second tactic, I will say, is that when you actually give the feedback, it helps a lot. First you have to check, am I.
- [63:22]
Actually giving this feedback?
- [63:23]
Because it's in the spirit of trying.
- [63:26]
To help one another. And if the answer is yes, then.
- [63:33]
We'Ve like, you know, moved from 60% to 80%. It's going to go well. Right? But what can often happen is I'm.
- [63:40]
Feeling like something happens.
- [63:41]
You do something, it triggers me because, I don't know, I had like a.
- [63:44]
Bad experience about that type of thing before and I'm kind of feeling mad.
- [63:48]
And I want to be right. Like, if my. My real rationale for why I want to give you feedback is I want to validate myself. I want to be right. I want to tell you you're wrong.
- [64:03]
I want to punish you.
- [64:04]
It's not going to go well. It's just already there. It's.
- [64:07]
There's no way you can deliver it.
- [64:09]
And somehow, unless you're a tremendous actor, it's just not going to go well.
- [64:15]
So you have to first check your intention.
- [64:17]
But if you've done that, you're like.
- [64:18]
No, no, no, I thought about it. I'm calm now.
- [64:20]
I'm not like, see seeing red. I really think that Lenny is just.
- [64:24]
Not aware that when he says this.
- [64:26]
It makes me and other people feel.
- [64:29]
Left out or whatever it is, right?
- [64:31]
Then I need to be able to give it to you. And so usually then if you're like, okay, now I might be nervous because I don't want to offend you.
- [64:38]
I really value our relationship. How am I going to tell you.
- [64:41]
You know, I don't want you to get defensive. What then? The third tactic I have is just say that out loud. Like, if I sit down with you and I say, lenny, I'm so nervous right now because I want to give.
- [64:54]
You some feedback, and I'm really worried.
- [64:56]
That it's going to impact our relationship, and I so value our relationship, and I don't want that to happen, but I also feel like it's just going to help you to hear it if you can. That does so much of the work of. Of it's. It's humanizing. Right? It's like you're gonna be. You're gonna realize that I'm going out on a limb. I'm being really vulnerable. And likely you're going to hear that so much more than if I just find a way to, like, drop it. Like, just, like, lobby it over because it's so difficult. Just actually lean into the fact that it is difficult and expose that, because that builds a lot of human connection.
- [65:33]
Lenny Rachitsky
This is amazing advice. Very tactical. Okay. Is there anything else? So we've talked about a bunch of timeless pieces of manager wisdom, things that people need to hear, especially as new managers. Is there anything else that you think is really important that I think people are just not fully grokking for being great managers?
- [65:53]
Julie Zhu
I think the idea of win win. I think about that all the time in my mind, and I go back to.
- [65:59]
Because I think that often we have.
- [66:01]
The story in our heads that sometimes things are adversarial.
- [66:05]
As a manager, I'm trying to get people to be more productive, so I'm trying to get them to do a thing that maybe they don't want to do. I'm going to try and get them to work harder or I'm going to somehow put more pressure on them. Like, if you start thinking like that, that's not a win win way to be thinking.
- [66:24]
Right.
- [66:25]
That's like you saying my getting better outcomes has to come at the expense of somebody else losing something. Um, and I think if you start thinking like that, it's very difficult to come up with a strategy or to truly be successful.
- [66:40]
But if you say, look, actually my.
- [66:42]
Job is to figure out how to create win wins.
- [66:45]
So I actually don't want. I don't want somebody over the long.
- [66:50]
Run to feel like what I've done is just created a ton of pressure for them, and now they're super burnt out and they're quick because that's not good for our team. That's not good for me, that's not good for our long term relationship. How do we find a, like, how do we find the solution that can be win win? And I think if you think like that, a lot of things get easier. So for example, with new managers, I think this is true for me too. The first time I had to tell someone that they're not, they shouldn't be a part of this team was extremely fraught for me. And the main reason was because I'm putting myself in their shoes and I'm imagining that this is truly horrible and I've just done a huge disservice to this person and that's like the most awful thing.
- [67:33]
But there's another way to look at it, which is, hey, if this person's.
- [67:36]
On the team, they probably want to be successful, they want to do great work, they want to be valued, they want to grow their career if this is not the place for them because it doesn't align with their true interests and the things that are going to help them be successful is just not.
- [67:52]
The thing that they either want to.
- [67:54]
Do or can do at this point. It doesn't do that person any good for me to somehow try to continue to make it. It's actually going to be miserable. Like I'm going back to like prolonging that misery state. And so sometimes a win win thing is to just say, look, it's not working. And I know I, I respect and value you so much that I know you want to do something that you can be proud of and you can grow in and that's going to be really valued. And right here, what we got this, isn't it, that's like a win win way of looking at the situation. Not a, like, you know, oh, my firing them is just definitely going to be a horrible, you know, I'm not trying to say it's not going to be hard, obviously it's hard, but it's in the, in the, the mentality and the, the, the mental model I think makes all the difference because it's going to be different in the way that I convey it to them. It's going to be different. And why this actually in the grander scheme of things may be great and it's going to reduce this adversarial feeling where they're now going to see me as like an enemy or somebody with all this power who's making, you know, choices that impact them and they feel powerless.
- [68:59]
It has to be a collaboration.
- [69:01]
And I think if it's not win win, and I could be wrong, I would say I don't think it's right, the person could actually say, no, you're wrong. And that would actually be great information because then maybe we can go back and we can find a way to make it win.
- [69:12]
Win.
- [69:12]
Lenny Rachitsky
Yeah, I was just gonna say they have to believe this. You can't just make it sound like this. Here's the win you're getting. Let go. It's a huge win for you. Uh, but in reality, the way you phrased it is actually almost always true. Like, this is just not a place that you will be happy and succeed at and it's better you go do something else.
- [69:27]
Julie Zhu
Yeah.
- [69:28]
Lenny Rachitsky
Okay. I'm going to keep fishing in this pool to see what else we got, but when we run out, let me know. Is there anything else that you think people should know, should hear, especially new managers, that they're still not fully getting?
- [69:41]
Julie Zhu
I think being aware of people, your own energy and conviction is really, really important.
- [69:49]
So I go back, like, a lot.
- [69:50]
Of these themes, as you can see, go back to, like, you have to first understand this about yourself and have the right mindset. And when you do, it becomes much easier to be able to be impactful with other people. So this is another one. I think it's very difficult for managers to be able. You know, we talked a lot about the three pillars of what are the major tools of a manager.
- [70:14]
The first is people.
- [70:15]
And so we talked a lot about, like, the importance of dimensionality and feedback and helping reflect and grow people. I think the second one is around purpose.
- [70:25]
Purpose is like, what are we here to do? What's our North Star? And I think it's very hard to actually convey that if you don't have conviction yourself. And so watching your conviction is really important, particularly since a lot of people who are managers, you often start out not as, like the founder and the CEO of the company, but you might be like a middle manager. So in some ways, you know, you didn't, like, create the vision, but you are in some ways expected to execute it or take a piece of it and do it. And I find that sometimes what new managers don't pay attention to enough is what is their true belief? Like, they feel like they might have to be like a soldier, so they just get orders and they have to execute it. But it really makes a difference if they themselves have gone through the work of thinking through, wait, why are we doing this?
- [71:15]
Do I believe this strategy?
- [71:16]
Does it make sense or not? And if it doesn't make sense to go and actually have the conversation with their manager or whoever else, just so they can get to alignment on. I really believe in what I'm doing. Because if you don't really believe in what you're doing, or you're just kind of parroting the thing that got passed through the organization, it's very hard for you to then be able to help other people see what that magic is or to be actually really effective as, as a person who can hold that vision and that purpose. So I just think you have to really check in with yourself on, like, wait, I. I know we're told to do this and this is what we have to do, but how do we really feel about it? Because if you don't feel good about it, then it's not going to be very likely that the project's going to succeed. I 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.
- [72:08]
There's no case where I can think.
- [72:10]
Of the project somehow turned out to be like, wildly successful.
- [72:13]
Lenny Rachitsky
This is such a classic challenge of managers is getting things done that you don't really agree with. And I can't help but ask you for advice on someone that isn't in that place of just, okay, I'm. We have this feature, our CEOs prioritizing. I just, this is not a good idea. But I need to have a brave face and not make it sound like I'm just being told what to do and I'm just reporting orders. I don't believe in this. Like, you don't want to do that. You've become a terrible, unsuccessful manager and you people lose trust in you. What's your advice to folks that are in that place of just how to find that balance?
- [72:45]
Julie Zhu
So I think first, if you feel that way, you gotta actually find a way to get it out and engage in dialogue.
- [72:52]
So if you're like, I think my.
- [72:53]
Manager told me to do this, I think it's a terrible idea. You got to talk to your manager about it, or you got to talk to the CEO or whoever and feel. Because once you engage in a dialogue, what will often happen is you'll learn more. Like, you'll have new information, you'll have new assumptions, and maybe you'll have influenced a project in some manner. But often the more you can learn about, okay, why did some other smart people feel like we should do this? And what parts of it do I believe and what parts am I more skeptical about? Like, you can probably decompose it from a blanket. It's good or bad to like, okay, this is a hypothesis. This is a hypothesis. This is a hypothesis. I might kind of believe this one. The reason I don't like the proposal, I don't believe this particular hypothesis, but I believe these other ones. Right. And so when you can start to get one level deeper into breaking it down into a set of assumptions, that makes it much easier because then you'll likely find something that you do kind of resonate with and you might be able to then steer things like, okay, that hypothesis doesn't. You can. I believe in disagree and commit. But now we can be very specific. We can isolate the thing that like and, and what we can also often do is like, okay, the reason I didn't like this proposal is because I have this, this like, I believe that this assumption is wrong. Right. So for they come up with like a really stupid example. But you know, your suggestion is, I know we have a great idea. We're going to go and put a lemonade stand on every block. And my core assumption is people do not like lemonade. That's not the hot beverage right now. And so I there, therefore I think this is a stupid plan. But if I talk to you about it and you're like, no, no, this is the core assumption. We disagree on likely. What starts to unfold is like, well, let's just, can we get some data? Can we get some information? Like, can we just, is there a quicker way to validate whether people like lemonade? Perhaps we should just test it in one market before we go and open up the lemonade stands across the, the entire 50 states. And so what happens is we can likely get to the actual specific area and come up with something. And then if I have to now share with my team, you know, we're going to try this hypothesis. I'm not sure how I feel about it, but I actually do think like, I don't know for sure. And you know, our, our CEO seems to think this is. But we're just going to test it and we're going to do the test in a way where that's what we want to find out is like, do people really love, like, do people 18 to 25 year olds love lemonade? If we put them on these neighborhood college campuses, right. So it becomes very specific and everyone's like, well, yeah, I don't know for sure, but like I'm happy to go in and test that and commit to it.
- [75:24]
Lenny Rachitsky
This is such a good advice. And there's also, you could layer on. Here's the things I do agree with and believe. Here's the ways that I see this as totally right. Here's the piece that I'm not so sure about, but that's why we're going to run this test and here's why. It's the smallest version of this test and why it's a great idea just to figure it out and we'll, we'll show them. I mean, you probably don't want to say that as you give this answer. It's so interesting. I almost want to do a whole new episode with you later. Of just like common conundrums, managers have challenges that every manager runs into that are really difficult to figure out on the spot. We could save that for the future. Okay, I'm going to take us to a couple of recurring themes on this podcast. Occasional recurring that every episode corners that we take guests to. The first is I want to take us to AI Corner. And what I like to do in AI Corner is ask what's a way that you've figured out to use AI in your work or your life that's just really interesting, really useful.
- [76:19]
Julie Zhu
Well, I already shared a lot about.
- [76:20]
Education and learning, but I'll share maybe a more fun story.
- [76:25]
So it's my kids birthdays.
- [76:27]
One of them just passed. And my middle son's birthday is in two weeks. And my daughter's birthday is, by the.
- [76:32]
Lenny Rachitsky
Way, the birthday just passed. The kid didn't pass.
- [76:34]
Julie Zhu
Okay.
- [76:34]
Yes, the birthday passed, right? That's right, the birthday pass. It's my kids birthdays. And one of my goals this year was to try and build them something. So give them a present that has me going back to being the IC and making something for them. And AI makes this really fun.
- [76:49]
And so I just. For my youngest son who is six.
- [76:52]
Years old, this is an idea that I stole from Eric Antono. And if you know Eric, have you had him on your podcast?
- [76:59]
Lenny Rachitsky
I haven't.
- [77:00]
I'm trying to. He actually sent me the. What is it? The. Yes, it's this. What is it called?
- [77:07]
Julie Zhu
The Metaphone.
- [77:08]
Yes.
- [77:08]
Lenny Rachitsky
Methaphone. Check this out. Yes, it's a. It's like instead of holding the phone in your pocket, you hold this thing and then you walk around with it and everyone's like, what the hell is that?
- [77:16]
Julie Zhu
Yeah.
- [77:17]
I too am the proud owner of a methophone and the next version upgrades with the little stickers.
- [77:23]
But Eric is great.
- [77:24]
You should definitely have him on your.
- [77:26]
On your. He's such a creative character and one time I saw him with a parrot on his shoulder.
- [77:33]
And I was like, why do you have a parrot on your shoulder? He's like, well, you can talk to my parrot. It's a talking parrot. And then I spoke to the parrot and the parrot spoke back to me. And what had happened is that he had hooked up a microphone. He like kind of surgically went into the parrot and added like a microphone, a speaker and connected it to voice mode on ChatGPT. So that.
- [77:52]
And.
- [77:52]
And it spoke in I think like a pirate voice. I was like, this is the best idea.
- [77:57]
And like my 6 year old son.
- [77:59]
Is really into raccoons. He has like a huge amount of raccoon stuffies. I was like, I want a raccoon that can talk to him.
- [78:05]
So I made that using the Eric Antono method. But it was great.
- [78:09]
It was a huge hit.
- [78:11]
And now my middle son's birthday is coming up and he is really into parody.
- [78:16]
He loves video games, so Minecraft. But what he often listens to on his Alexa are these parody songs.
- [78:22]
So it'll be like Justin Bieber's hit.
- [78:25]
Or like Gundam style, but they've changed.
- [78:26]
The lyrics so it becomes like a.
- [78:29]
Video game parody of some video game that he's playing. And they're horribly sung, you know, they're like off tune.
- [78:36]
It's just like some person who produced it. And I was like, well, if he doesn't seem to mind off King seeing I'm going to create him an album of video game parody songs and I'm going to create like an. So I created an app on Replit that that what and what it does is it. You just give it a song like, you know, this is Justin Bieber's baby and you link to a Spotify song. And I give him some context like, oh, Locke likes playing Kingdom Rush. Right now we have like an inside joke about the gargoyles being free money. Like whatever it is, I just give it a bunch of content and like write me a song that just kind of personalizes it and it's a parody of this particular video game and it writes me the lyrics. It's pretty good at doing this. It's like pretty high quality. And then. And it, you know, again it does it according to the beats of the music and then I just sing it and record it and then I got myself a song. So I'm creating an album of this which I'm going to give to him. He's not going to hear this podcast so no one spoil it to him. I think he's going to go publish after his birthday. But I'm very excited about this.
- [79:34]
Lenny Rachitsky
Wait, so you're going to be the one singing the song?
- [79:37]
Julie Zhu
Yes.
- [79:38]
Lenny Rachitsky
I thought you were going to use Suno or some AI thing to actually sing it.
- [79:41]
Julie Zhu
No, I think I'm going to sing it myself. And it just like all of this made it so easy.
- [79:44]
Like, all I have to do is.
- [79:45]
Just read it, like, record. And again, he's not into. I'm not a very good singer, but he's not into or he's not. It doesn't turn him off to have to hear often.
- [79:55]
Lenny Rachitsky
Wow, that is so beautiful. This gave me so many ideas for gifts I can give to give kids in my life. And I just love how. I love how AI is making it, I don't know, easier to be a parent in some ways more delightful. These are awesome examples. Okay, I'm going to take us to a different corner. Contrarian corner. What's something that you believe that most other people don't? Most other people would disagree with?
- [80:20]
Julie Zhu
I believe that there's infinity in every direction. So that makes me pretty contrary on.
- [80:30]
Pretty much everything that anyone says. So if someone says something like on Twitter, I sometimes play this game with.
- [80:37]
Myself, which is, in what context would.
- [80:41]
That actually not be true? And I think the reality is that the world is so. Or at least my reality and my understanding of the reality is that the world is just infinitely complex. And so, for example, if my kids say something like going outside is boring.
- [80:56]
Or taking a walk is boring, or doing something is boring, my general response will be, well, it's because you're not.
- [81:02]
Seeing the infinity that's in that direction. So even for example, something really mundane like staring at a blank wall, I.
- [81:11]
Think that you can make that actually.
- [81:13]
Deeply, deeply interesting because you can use.
- [81:17]
That as an opportunity to go into your own mind and to figure out.
- [81:20]
Like, how you can make time pass.
- [81:22]
Or you can meditate on the existence, or meditate on your breath, or just be grateful for the purpose of being alive. And like two people, right? One person, you can say, sit in.
- [81:33]
Front of a wall for an hour.
- [81:35]
And they will, like my kid. They will super complain and be like, this is the worst thing ever. But you can put somebody else like a monk, and they'll have a wonderful experience. And 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.
- [81:56]
Lenny Rachitsky
Wow, these are some deep answers. This is very. I don't know Buddhist, Very mindfulness oriented. This. I did a retreat once and their, their advice was just, yeah, anytime you're bored, just notice all the things that are going on around you. Like, what does your seat feel like right now? What does the air feel like? What are you hearing right now? And it's exactly what you're saying. There's infinite things to pay attention to and keep you interested. It's hard, hard to actually do that for a long time and practice. That's why it's a practice.
- [82:24]
Julie Zhu
That's why it's a practice. But I, I repeat that to myself because oftentimes if I have a bad experience, I'm feeling a certain way. It helps me to realize that, like, it's often probably in my head. Like, it's because I haven't gained the skills to be able to see the richness and infinity in that. And that's so, like, I can maybe work on that. And that feels better than feeling like, oh, I'm a victim of my circumstances. Like, this thing happened to me. And like, that's so awful. But now I'm powerless. I can't do anything about it. Like, that, to me, is a worse feeling than the alternative, which is I just don't have the skill yet. I can recognize it for what it is. I don't have the skill yet, but I can, I can grow. I can maybe get better at it. There is a person out there who could do that, who had the same situation as me and feels much more positively than I do. And don't I want to be more like that person.
- [83:15]
Lenny Rachitsky
That's such a beautiful circle back to our very first episode, which a lot of it was on Imposter Syndrome and overcoming that and your story there. So I love that. That's maybe a way to close this conversation. But before we do that and before we get to a very exciting lightning round, is there anything else that you wanted to mention or share or double down on that we've talked about?
- [83:35]
Julie Zhu
I just want to say thank you. Honestly, I'm so inspired by the work that you do. We've known each other for quite a while, and I just think from the very first idea that you had for this newsletter, for the podcast, it's been incredible, and I think the world gets so much from it. I'm sure you hear that a lot, but I am very grateful.
- [83:52]
Lenny Rachitsky
Well, I really appreciate that. And I say this every time we do a chat, is just, this wouldn't have been possible without you. Julie, I was inspired by your new longtime newsletter, the Looking Glass. That's essentially my. My idea was, what if I do this for product? And I started on medium just like you did, and then I moved to substack, and then it's like, what if I charge for this? And then that worked. And then I'm like, what if I do a podcast? And then that worked. But it all began with your. Your concept, so. Thank you, Julie.
- [84:22]
Julie Zhu
Yeah.
- [84:22]
And I think you do it with so much kindness and curiosity, as you always have. So I love that.
- [84:28]
Lenny Rachitsky
That's just who I am. Well, with that, we have reached our very exciting lightning round. I've got five questions for you. Are you ready?
- [84:34]
Julie Zhu
I'm ready.
- [84:36]
Lenny Rachitsky
What are two or three books that you find yourself recommending most to other people?
- [84:39]
Julie Zhu
The first is Zen and the Art.
- [84:41]
Of Motor Motorcycle Maintenance.
- [84:43]
I absolutely love that book. It's beautifully written. It's so deep.
- [84:47]
My whole philosophy around quality is beautifully comes. A lot of it comes from that book. The idea and even all the stuff that we talked about change. What does it mean to be at that forefront of change and dynamic quality. I think he just talks about so beautifully and so masterfully in that book. So old classic, but I try to reread it every few years or so. Second is Conscious Business is my favorite management book.
- [85:18]
It's a little bit of a sleeper.
- [85:19]
Hit because I actually end up recommending this one far more than my own book.
- [85:23]
Lenny Rachitsky
Oh, wow.
- [85:24]
Julie Zhu
I read this one after I wrote my book, and I always tell people that if I read it before, I'm.
- [85:29]
Not sure I would have written my.
- [85:30]
Book, because I would have been like, Conscious Business is really the book that will. That. That. That really, really so much resonates. And I think what. And all of the many of the things I talked about, this idea of win. Win. The idea of, like, being a player, not a victim, and how to think about work. Not just it's a job, it's. But, like, how do you really think about aligning it with your own personal values and what you want to do in the world? I think that this book really speaks to that so beautifully.
- [85:57]
It is also very tactical.
- [85:58]
It's got a lot of really wonderful examples. I will tell people the COVID isn't very attractive. And I think that if you judge a book by its cover, like this seems very corporate. Y. The title also seems like kind of like, what Conscious Business. And the first chapter is a little.
- [86:14]
Bit more technical, but if you just.
- [86:16]
Get past it and get into chapter two and you start, you know, with examples of the soccer team and what it's just like the best management book.
- [86:23]
Lenny Rachitsky
That is good, good advice to get people over the hump when they look for it. You're like, okay, okay, I'm going to stick with it.
- [86:28]
Julie Zhu
Yes. And okay. Third book. I love the book Good Inside by Dr. Becky. It's a parenting book and it's a very wildly popular parenting book, so I really recommend it to all parents. But I also think it's just a wonderful book for thinking about relationships and because parenting is that it's like a very, very deep and intense relationship and.
- [86:51]
Interaction that you have with another human being. And there's so many things that I.
- [86:54]
Read in parenting books, including good inside by Dr. Becky, that I think, like, are could just as well been like a management or a team leadership book.
- [87:03]
Lenny Rachitsky
I am thinking about trying to ask Dr. Becky to come on the podcast. I feel like there could be a lot of synergy. Exactly. For that reason. And she uses this term sturdy, which you wrote, which inspired maybe your.
- [87:15]
Julie Zhu
I probably got it. I mean, I think she talks a lot about sturdiness and that just incepted right in. Right in here.
- [87:20]
Lenny Rachitsky
Yes. Yeah. Her whole thing is creating, being a sturdy parent. Strong but flexible, I imagine. Yeah. I love. I love her and I love her stuff. I watch all her videos on TikTok and Emily Oster. Okay, next question. Is there a movie or TV show you've recently enjoyed?
- [87:35]
Julie Zhu
I have not watched anything. I have no good answer for you. I think the only thing I watched this year was a rewatch of La La Land, which I do truly love.
- [87:44]
Lenny Rachitsky
So delightful. Okay, is there a product you recently discovered that you really love?
- [87:49]
Julie Zhu
I don't think there's anything too new. I love granola. I love Replit. I've used all of the different coding apps. Cursor is big on me for now. I just got a matic robot. I think that's been really delightful so far. At least the setup. I haven't used it long term, but the setup, the way that it worked, the fact that it had little stickers and you could make it into a dog or a cat, was like a wonderful experience.
- [88:17]
Lenny Rachitsky
Pneumatic robot will link to it. I am also a huge fan. I'm not an investor. It's essentially Waymo meets Roomba for folks that don't know anything about it. It's like a very sophisticated robot vacuum built by AI Vision People.
- [88:32]
Julie Zhu
Oh, I just thought of one more as well. The Limitless Pendant. So, disclaimer. I am a small investor in Limitless, but what I love about it Is that so? Okay. It's a pendant. You wear it and it just records everything that's going on. And later it summarizes things and it gives you feedback. And I don't usually wear it out because I find that maybe other people feel, like, awkward that I'm, like, recording everything. I usually try and get people's permission, but I do wear it at home when I'm with my kids. And one of the best things that the pendant does is it gives me feedback on parenting.
- [89:04]
Lenny Rachitsky
What, like automatically or you throw it into ChatGPT?
- [89:08]
Julie Zhu
No, it will allow automatically. Like, there's an app and it will sometimes notify me or if I check it. Or I can also engage with, like, ask it. But what it does is essentially, it's like granola, but, like, for your life in. In terms of capturing everything, summarizing it, and then giving you tips and feedback. And it's said things like, hey, there was that time you were talking about the game and you cut your kid off a lot, and maybe next time think about letting them speak fully and listening better.
- [89:34]
Lenny Rachitsky
The app itself natively does that. Yeah, I did not know that because I have one. I haven't used it much recently. That is incredible. I wonder if it gives you relationship advice too. If you're talking to your partner, I wonder how you even know.
- [89:46]
Julie Zhu
Yeah, it's. So I did a pretty good job of inferring. I think I said person too, but it was kind of eye opening for me.
- [89:57]
Lenny Rachitsky
Incredible. Something. So there's a recent episode of the Our How I AI podcast, or sister podcast, where somebody wears that in their meetings with cos with their CEO and automatically turns what they're asking for into a prototype from the meeting notes. And then sales teams can start showing it to people to see if they're interested. How about that?
- [90:19]
Julie Zhu
That's awesome. That is super cool.
- [90:21]
Lenny Rachitsky
Holy moly. Yeah, we don't even. What is even happening? Okay, I'll keep going. Do you have a favorite life motto that you find yourself repeating to yourself? Sharing with others?
- [90:30]
Julie Zhu
I like, make it happen.
- [90:32]
Just a reminder that at the end.
- [90:33]
Of the day, we can do a lot of. We can have a lot of motion. Maybe there's another one that I really like. I think about this poster. It used to be a poster at Facebook that says, don't mistake motion for progress. So there's this idea, like, be the change we want to be in the world, I guess, is all other ways of saying the same thing, which is like, you know, I can do things. Like, we can all do things. We have better and better tools to go out there and make things happen. Make it happen.
- [90:59]
Lenny Rachitsky
Like the common meme on Twitter, you can just do things.
- [91:03]
Julie Zhu
Yes.
- [91:04]
Lenny Rachitsky
Final question. I like to ask this question of folks that are really deep in AI and been working with AI and kind of getting a sense of where things are going. Is there something that you teach your kids or teaching your kids think about, encouraging them to learn, knowing that AI is going to be a big part of their life?
- [91:20]
Julie Zhu
Emotional regulation is still really, really, really important. That's probably the thing that I think about the most in terms of what I want my kids to learn. I want my kids to be able to introspect, to have a better understanding of where their state of mind is, because we're still human. We still have the same hardware that humans have had for thousands of years, and that's not changing, even as the tools and the environment around us change. And so I feel that you have to really understand yourself and you have to understand what's going on for you and where you are biased and where you are not, because AI can make it. And this is my great fear, is that it makes things so much more comfortable. And I have this great fear that this has been the trajectory that we've been on with technology, right? This is, again, going back to, like, every strength is a weakness. Technology makes things a lot easier. That's why we invent. That's why we create. Like, we're always human race has always been about trying to better our circumstances and. And in some ways, control our destiny, like control our future. But at the same time, all of that control gets to a point where we have so many shortcuts in our lives. And you can shortcut a lot of things. I can shortcut relationships. You 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. And AI makes it even, I think, more attractive because now there's a person who can. Or there's a thing that can be very, very personalized. And if you're like, oh, I want a distraction, I want to do something. You got that? But how do we actually still learn to sit with what is our true biology that's not changing? And how do we continue to be the kind of people that want to take on the freedom of doing challenging things? Because I find that if we don't do challenging things, we just.
- [93:07]
We suffer.
- [93:09]
We suffer in a different way. And so to me, true freedom is you can pick the things that are hard and you can feel pride in becoming the thing that you want to be. It's not forced upon you. It's not for survival's sake anymore. But you still have to pick. And I want to figure out for my children the fact that it is really important to still find the challenge. Yes, you can use AI to do that, but really don't think about it as a shortcut tool because if that's the case, I don't actually think that they're going to be able to become the kind of people they want to be in the world.
- [93:41]
Lenny Rachitsky
What a beautiful way to end this conversation, Julia. It feels like this is just like some kind of huge milestone of this podcast. Just like having you back three years later. It's like a, I don't know, a chapter in the, in the journey. I appreciate you coming back. I appreciate you sharing all this wisdom with us. Two final questions. Where can folks find you online if they want to reach out and maybe chat about maybe Sundial, maybe whatever else you're up to? And then how can listeners be useful to you?
- [94:07]
Julie Zhu
Well, I would love to work with.
- [94:09]
People who are at companies building really cool things and want better answers to how we build better. And so if you think your company would be interested in working with us at Sundial and figuring out how do we make every single decision maker into their own expert analyst, please reach out. So that's one area. So Sundial. Sundial. So I am on X. So I've been tweeting a lot more, sharing thoughts, you know, going back to that, that skill of practicing just share what's on your mind. But for the long form stuff, I have my blog, the Looking Glass. It's on substack. I share articles and thoughts about AI product building leadership periodically. And then of course I have my book, the revised edition with two additional chapters. One is around managing remotely and the other one is around managing in a downturn or managing in change, difficult change scenarios. That will be coming out in two weeks time. The new content will be in the paperback. That's important. And I'll send you a version of this when I get a copy myself. Lenny. But the paperback has a gradient type of COVID The hardback will eventually get the new content, but it just takes a while to phase out from all of the different retailers. So if you buy one, I cannot guarantee that it's going to have the new content, but certainly the Kindle and the paperback will have all of the.
- [95:32]
Lenny Rachitsky
New content and then so just for the publish date because this might come out later. What's the, what's the date? It's coming out just for folks.
- [95:38]
Julie Zhu
September 9th.
- [95:40]
Lenny Rachitsky
Okay, amazing. So I think it'll be out by the time this is out. So go buy it. I imagine. Available Amazon, all your local retailers.
- [95:46]
Julie Zhu
Yes. Yes.
- [95:47]
Lenny Rachitsky
Amazing. Julie, thank you so much for being here.
- [95:50]
Julie Zhu
Thank you so much Lenny. This was so fun. I hope to be back in another three years or whatever the next chapter is.
- [95:56]
Lenny Rachitsky
Hopefully sooner. Bye everyone.
- [95:59]
Julie Zhu
Bye.
- [96:00]
Lenny Rachitsky
Thank you so much for listening. If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favorite podcast app. Also please consider giving us a rating.
- [96:10]
Or leaving a review as that really.
- [96:12]
Helps other listeners find find the podcast. You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show@lennyspodcast.com See you in the next episode.