From the library
The Making of a Manager
Julie Zhuo, 2019
In one paragraph
Zhuo's account of becoming a manager without warning, written while still visibly working it out. The contribution is the honesty about the first year: the awkward one-to-ones, the first time firing someone, the gap between feeling like a fraud and being competent. Most useful in the first two years of managing. Least useful beyond that, and it is shaped throughout by a fast-growing tech company with unusual resources.
Where this sits in the operating system
People & Relationships
Systems Over Goals
Systems Over Goals
Systems Over Goals
Key insights
Written while still working it out, which is why the first-year awkwardness survives on the page.
A manager's job is a team that produces good outcomes, which means purpose, people and process rather than doing the work well yourself.
Feedback is specific, timely and about behaviour. Most feedback fails on the first of the three.
Recognise it early
The failure and the correction sit side by side deliberately. Read the left column asking whether any of it is already true of you.
Doing the work yourself
Vague expectations
Skipping feedback
Ritual bloat
Ad‑hoc onboarding
The same idea, argued differently
Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg, Alan Eagle
Reed Hastings, Erin Meyer
Verne Harnish
Andrew Grove
The full breakdown
Before you close this
Naming the specific moment you will act roughly doubles the odds you do.
Reference
- Author
- Julie Zhuo
- Published
- 2019
- Category
- Business
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