Julie Zhuo is the former VP and Head of Design at Facebook (now Meta), author of the bestselling book The Making of a Manager, and co-founder of Sundial, an AI-powered data analysis company. Also, my first-ever podcast guest over 3 years ago! *In our conversation, we discuss:* 1. The three core manager skills that translate directly to managing AI agents 2. How her team uses AI to learn new skills 10x faster 3. The “diagnose with data, treat with design” framework for balancing gut and data 4. Why hypergrowth AI companies have terrible data infrastructure (and why it doesn’t matter) 5. How to give feedback that actually lands—including Julie’s exact script for difficult conversations 6. What Julie’s teaching her kids about an AI future (hint: it’s not coding or STEM) *Brought to you by:* Mercury—The art of simplified finances: https://mercury.com/ DX—The developer intelligence platform designed by leading researchers: http://getdx.com/lenny PostHog—How developers build successful products: https://posthog.com/lenny *Transcript:* https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/from-managing-people-to-managing-ai-julie-zhuo *My biggest takeaways (for paid newsletter subscribers):* https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/i/172723725/my-biggest-takeaways-from-this-conversation *Where to find Julie Zhuo:* • X: https://x.com/joulee • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/julie-zhuo/ • Website: https://www.juliezhuo.com/ • Newsletter: https://lg.substack.com/ • Sundial: https://sundial.so/ *Where to find Lenny:* • Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com • X: https://twitter.com/lennysan • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/ *In this episode, we cover:* *Referenced:* • Julie Zhuo on accelerating your career, impostor syndrome, writing, building product sense, using intuition vs. data, hiring designers, and moving into management: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/episode-2-julie-zhuo • Waymo: https://waymo.com/ • How we restructured Airtable’s entire org for AI | Howie Liu (co-founder and CEO): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-we-restructured-airtables-entire-org-for-ai • Cursor: https://cursor.com/ • The rise of Cursor: The $300M ARR AI tool that engineers can’t stop using | Michael Truell (co-founder and CEO): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/the-rise-of-cursor-michael-truell • Inside ChatGPT: The fastest growing product in history | Nick Turley (Head of ChatGPT at OpenAI): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/inside-chatgpt-nick-turley • Behind the founder: Marc Benioff: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/behind-the-founder-marc-benioff • OpenAI’s CPO on how AI changes must-have skills, moats, coding, startup playbooks, more | Kevin Weil (CPO at OpenAI, ex-Instagram, Twitter): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/kevin-weil-open-ai • Anthropic’s CPO on what comes next | Mike Krieger (co-founder of Instagram): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/anthropics-cpo-heres-what-comes-next • The Magic Loop: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/the-magic-loop • Dunning-Kruger effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect • Eric Antonow on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/antonow/ • Methaphone: https://methaphone.com/ • Replit: https://replit.com/ • “Baby” by Justin Bieber on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/track/6epn3r7S14KUqlReYr77hA • Kingdom Rush: https://www.kingdomrush.com/ • Dr. Becky on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@drbeckyatgoodinside • Emily Oster on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@profemilyoster • La La Land on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/80095365 • Granola: https://www.granola.ai/ • Matic robots: https://maticrobots.com/ • Limitless pendant: https://www.limitless.ai/ • How I AI: https://www.youtube.com/@howiaipodcast ...References continued at: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/from-managing-people-to-managing-ai-julie-zhuo _Production and marketing by https://penname.co/._ _For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com._ Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.