The Making of a Manager

The Making of a Manager by Julie Zhuo

Author: Julie Zhuo
Published: 2019
Pages: 288

Overview

Julie Zhuo became a manager at Facebook at age 25 with no formal training. This book distills her decade of experience leading design teams into practical, honest advice for new and aspiring managers, especially in tech.

Key Highlights

What Makes a Great Manager

• Purpose: Your team knows what success looks like and cares about achieving it
• People: You have the right people with the right skills in the right roles
• Process: You have efficient ways of working together that enable high output

The First Three Months

• Week 1: Build trust through 1-on-1s, ask questions, listen more than you speak
• Month 1: Understand team dynamics, identify strengths and gaps, observe existing processes
• Month 3: Begin implementing small improvements, establish your management style

Leading People

• Hiring is everything: Spending 50% of your time on hiring when building a team is not unreasonable
• Feedback loops: Give daily micro-feedback, weekly 1-on-1s, and quarterly performance reviews
• Growth mindset: Your job is to help each person reach their career goals, even if it means leaving your team

Making Decisions

• Comparative advantage: Delegate tasks others can do better or that help them grow
• The 70% rule: If someone can do the task 70% as well as you, delegate it
• Reversible vs. irreversible: Move fast on reversible decisions, deliberate carefully on irreversible ones

Running Meetings

• Every meeting needs: A clear purpose, the right people, and a plan for what success looks like
• 1-on-1s framework: Discuss what’s top of mind, give/receive feedback, reflect on how things are going
• Decision-making meetings: Share context upfront, discuss options, assign clear next steps

Building Culture

• Values through actions: Culture is defined by what behaviors get rewarded and what gets criticized
• Psychological safety: Teams perform best when people feel safe to take risks and be vulnerable
• Celebrate learning: Frame failures as learning opportunities to encourage experimentation

Transitioning from IC to Manager

• Identity shift: Success is now measured by your team’s output, not your individual contributions
• Energy management: Manager energy comes from seeing others grow and succeed
• Technical skills: Stay technical enough to have credibility but don’t need to be the best coder

Practical Takeaways for Principal Engineers

1. Start with trust: Before introducing any changes, invest in building relationships
2. Delegate with context: Explain the “why” behind decisions to develop judgment in others
3. Create feedback systems: Don’t wait for formal reviews; build continuous feedback into daily work
4. Hire for potential: Look for learning velocity and adaptability, not just current skills
5. Design processes: Good process amplifies good judgment; bad process creates bureaucracy
6. Manage your energy: Protect time for deep work; batch similar activities together
7. Grow others intentionally: Have explicit career conversations; connect people with opportunities

Memorable Quotes

“The job of a manager is not to do the work themselves but to enable their team to do great work.”

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”

“Your role as a manager is not to do the work yourself, even if you are the best at it, because that will only take you so far. Your role is to improve the purpose, people, and process of your team to get as high a multiplier effect on your collective outcome as you can.”

Why This Matters for Technical Leaders

For principal engineers moving into leadership roles, this book provides a concrete framework for the transition from individual contributor to multiplier. It addresses the common pitfalls (wanting to code everything yourself, not delegating effectively, avoiding difficult conversations) with practical strategies. The emphasis on building systems and processes aligns perfectly with an engineering mindset, making management feel less like “soft skills” and more like architecting human systems.