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The Making of a Manager
Julie Zhuo
The TL;DR
Julie Zhuo wrote the first-manager guide she wished she'd had when she became a manager at Facebook at age 25. A manager's job is to enable a team of people to achieve more together than they could individually. This rests on three pillars: people (hiring, developing, retaining), purpose (clarity on what success looks like), and process (how the team works together). Feedback should be timely, specific, and kind — saved-up feedback is a betrayal. Hiring is the single highest-leverage activity a manager does, because the right people multiply everything. Feeling like an impostor is completely normal; confidence follows action, not the reverse.
Core ideas
- 1A great manager's job: enable a team of people to achieve more than they could alone.
- 2Three pillars: people, purpose, process.
- 3Feedback should be timely, specific, and kind. Save up nothing.
- 4Hiring is the single highest-leverage thing you do.
- 5It's normal to feel like an impostor. Action precedes confidence.
Key quotes
"Your job, as a manager, is to get better outcomes from a group of people working together."
"The single most important factor in whether something is a great experience is the people."
"Feedback is a gift."
Apply it this week
- →Send feedback within 24 hours of the event, in writing.
- →Ask in every 1:1: what's going well, what's not, how can I help?
- →Block time weekly to source candidates, even when not actively hiring.
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