Julie Zhuo – Author Biography
Early Life
Julie Zhuo is a Chinese-American technology executive and author. She studied computer science at Stanford University, where she developed the technical foundation for her career in product design and management.
Career
Zhuo joined Facebook in 2006 as one of its first designers, employee number in the low hundreds, and rose over fourteen years to become Vice President of Product Design, leading teams that shaped products used by billions of people. She was promoted to management in her mid-twenties — young, inexperienced, and suddenly responsible for other people’s careers — and learned leadership largely by trial and error. Her widely read blog, The Looking Glass, documented those lessons in real time and built a large following among managers. Her book The Making of a Manager: What to Do When Everyone Looks to You (2019) distilled that experience into a practical guide for new managers, covering hiring, feedback, one-on-ones, and leading through uncertainty. It became a bestseller and a standard recommendation for first-time managers in tech. After leaving Facebook in 2020, she co-founded Sundial, a company building tools for managers, and continues to write and speak on leadership.
Major Works
Zhuo’s major work is The Making of a Manager (2019). She is also known for her long-running management blog, The Looking Glass.
Writing Style and Themes
Zhuo writes with unusual candor about the awkwardness of becoming a manager — the imposter syndrome, the mistakes, the difficult conversations. Her style is warm, concrete, and example-driven: every principle is illustrated with a story from her own management life. Her central theme is that management is a craft that can be learned, not a talent you’re born with, and that great managers are made through deliberate practice in the small daily disciplines of leading people.
Legacy
The Making of a Manager became one of the defining management books of the late 2010s, especially beloved in the technology industry, where Zhuo’s Facebook experience gave her rare credibility. Her writing helped a generation of young managers navigate the transition from individual contributor to leader.
