Overcome imposter syndrome and accelerate your career | Julie Zhuo (Sundial, Facebook)

Julie Zhuo’s career trajectory is the stuff of Silicon Valley legend. She joined Facebook as an engineering intern, transitioned into design, and eventually rose to become the Vice President of Product Design for the Facebook app. To the outside observer, her ascent looks like a straight line of confident victories. However, the reality was far more complex. For the first seven or eight years of her tenure, Zhuo grappled with intense imposter syndrome, questioning her right to be in the room.

Now the co-founder of Sundial, a company focused on making product analytics accessible, Zhuo offers a transparent look at the mechanics of career growth. Her insights bridge the gap between individual contribution and executive leadership, offering actionable frameworks for developing product sense, mastering communication, and navigating the emotional landscape of high-growth environments.

Key Takeaways

• Imposter syndrome often correlates with growth: Feeling unqualified usually means you are in a position that forces you to learn rapidly.
• Writing clarifies thinking: Public writing acts as a forcing function to organize thoughts, improving your ability to communicate in meetings and leadership contexts.
• Product sense is an observation muscle: It is not an innate talent but a skill built through rigorous observation of yourself, others, and data.
• Prioritize feedback hierarchically: When reviewing products, validate value first, then ease of use, and finally craftsmanship and delight.
• Management starts before the title: Aspiring managers should seek opportunities to mentor interns, onboard new hires, and improve team processes as individual contributors.

Reframing Imposter Syndrome as a Growth Signal

It is common to assume that high-ranking executives possess an unwavering sense of confidence. Zhuo challenges this narrative by admitting that she felt like an imposter for nearly a decade at Facebook. The constant refrain in her head was whether she deserved to be there or if she was qualified to handle the expanding responsibilities.

However, a shift in perspective occurred when she realized that the periods of highest discomfort coincided with her most significant professional growth. When you are doing something you have never done before, it is impossible to feel fully prepared. In this context, imposter syndrome is not a signal of incompetence, but a signal of learning.

Being in an uncomfortable situation... coincides with the fastest and most intense periods of growth in one's career. Maybe if I’m constantly putting myself in a situation where I haven't seen this problem before, that's also what's going to push me to grow and learn.

To navigate this, Zhuo suggests building a toolkit of support:

• Ask for help early: Attempting to "fake it until you make it" often prevents you from receiving the support that could accelerate your learning.
• Normalize the struggle: Realize that peers and mentors likely feel the same uncertainty when facing unprecedented challenges.
• Embrace vulnerability: admitting what you don't know often builds deeper connections with your team and invites collaborative problem-solving.

Writing as a Tool for Clarity and Influence

Zhuo’s popular newsletter, The Looking Glass, and her book, The Making of a Manager, were born out of a professional necessity rather than a desire for fame. Early in her career, she received feedback that she was too quiet in large meetings. The root cause was a fear of sounding unintelligent.

To combat this, she set a New Year's resolution to publish one blog post every week. The goal was not high readership, but simply to hit "publish." This practice transformed her career in two distinct ways:

1. Self-Therapy and Clarity: Writing became a way to untangle the complex thoughts running through her head. She viewed her posts as "letters to herself"—advice she needed to hear to perform better the next day.
2. Communication Confidence: The discipline of organizing thoughts on paper translated directly to her ability to speak up in meetings. Because she had already articulated her views in writing, she could express them verbally with greater precision.

For those struggling with brevity, Zhuo recommends experimenting with constraints, such as Twitter threads. The character limit forces the writer to strip away ornamentation and focus strictly on the core logic of an argument, honing the ability to communicate sharply.

Developing and Validating Product Sense

Product sense is often treated as a mystical instinct, but Zhuo argues it is a practice rooted in observation and curiosity. Developing this "muscle" requires a systematic approach to interacting with the world.

The Three Levels of Observation

To build product sense, one must move from the personal to the general:

1. Observe Yourself: When using a new app, analyze your own reactions. Why did you download it? Where did you get confused? What made you close the app?
2. Observe Others: Watch friends or colleagues use products. Ask them why they made specific decisions. This helps you understand perspectives that differ from your own.
3. Dissect the Decisions: Engage in critiques with other product thinkers. Analyze the trade-offs the creators made. Read deep-dive breakdowns from industry experts to see patterns in successful products.

Balancing Intuition with Data

A common friction point in product development is the tension between founder intuition and data validation. Zhuo posits that intuition is reliable only when the builder is the target user. In the early days of Facebook, the team consisted of college students building for college students; their gut instincts were largely accurate.

However, as a product scales to include diverse demographics and international markets, the builder’s intuition becomes less reliable. At this stage, data analytics and A/B testing become essential—not to replace design, but to validate whether assumptions about human behavior hold true at scale.

Structuring Effective Product Reviews

Product review meetings are notorious for becoming consensus-driven roadblocks. Zhuo advises that the goal of a review is not to get everyone to agree, but to gather diverse perspectives to prioritize the right problems.

The Hierarchy of Feedback

To prevent feedback from becoming a jumbled mess of subjective opinions, Zhuo categorizes critiques into a hierarchy. Feedback should be addressed in this specific order:

• 1. Value: Does this solve a real problem for the user? If the core value proposition is missing, no amount of polish will save the product.
• 2. Ease of Use: Can the user access the value without friction? If the interface is confusing or the load times are slow, the value remains locked away.
• 3. Craft and Delight: Is the experience joyful? This includes aesthetics, animations, and tone. This layer is vital for a great product but should not be prioritized over functionality.

When giving feedback, non-designers should focus on identifying the problem rather than proposing solutions. Saying "Change this button to blue" is less helpful than explaining, "I didn't click the button because I didn't realize it was actionable."

The Path to Management and Hiring

For individual contributors aspiring to leadership, the transition to management should not be a sudden jump. Zhuo emphasizes that many management responsibilities can—and should—be practiced before the title is bestowed.

Aspiring leaders can demonstrate their potential by:

• Mentoring interns: This simulates management in a time-bound, lower-risk environment.
• Onboarding new hires: This requires teaching, empathy, and organizational awareness.
• Improving processes: Identifying a broken meeting structure or documentation gap and taking the initiative to fix it shows leadership.

Hiring Designers as a Founder

In a competitive talent market, founders often struggle to hire top-tier designers. Zhuo notes that designers want to work where design is respected, not treated as a service bureau for "making things pretty."

To attract talent, founders must demonstrate a commitment to the craft. This includes having a well-designed marketing site (even if contracted out) and learning the vocabulary of design. When a founder can discuss the nuances of user experience and visual systems intelligently, it signals to candidates that design will be a strategic partner in the company's future.

Conclusion

Julie Zhuo’s journey from a self-described imposter to a leading voice in product design underscores the importance of a growth mindset. Whether it is through writing to clarify thoughts, observing the world to build product sense, or stepping up to lead before having the title, career acceleration is rarely about having all the answers. Instead, it is about the willingness to ask the right questions, embrace discomfort, and rigorously validate your assumptions.