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Back to The Miseducation of Julie Zhuo.

Do People Remember Failed Facebook Launches?

Soleio says nobody remembers the Facebook launches that failed. Print out every announcement from the first five years and 80% of it can be ripped up and shredded. People do not remember the shreds at all, and they do not hold the failures against the people who shipped them. Nobody is still saying group deals failed at Facebook and calling the team dummies.

He has forgotten a long list of attempts. Group deals is one of them. Another is the moment you shop for something and it automatically publishes a story. The toaster is a launch a lot of people miss. Pandemic is one people did not like when it launched.

The pile of attempts is not what stays in memory. Early Facebook put out announcement after announcement, and the ones that failed dropped out of what anyone recalls.

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The Miseducation of Julie Zhuo ·

First of Kind

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  1. What Is High-level Design?Julie Zhuo calls high-level design one motion used at every scale. A task, a team, and a company are the same kind of work.
  2. Why Do Enterprise Products Still Pick Up the Phone?Julie Zhuo says enterprise products still have to answer the phone in the middle of the night.
  3. How New Was Early Facebook Growth Work?Julie Zhuo says a lot of what Facebook did back then was very new.
  4. Why Does Being in Person Help You Learn?Julie Zhuo says being in person makes a big difference to learning, because an environment where other people think about similar things gives more exposure…
  5. What Did Julie Zhuo Realize About Customers?Julie Zhuo realized, six months into building her company, that she had not talked enough to customers. The team was stuck choosing whether to do A or B.
  6. Why Do Hypotheticals Beat a Ready-made Process?Julie Zhuo believes people learn product development far more when they create the process themselves and then reflect on whether they believe it is the best…
  7. Why Does Julie Zhuo Treat Team Confusion as a Mirror?Julie Zhuo treats confusion on the Sundial team as a mirror of a conflict she has not settled in herself.
  8. How Did Fear of Failing Hold Julie Zhuo Back?Julie Zhuo waited to start a company because she was too scared she could not succeed.
  9. How Did Julie Zhuo Get Into Writing?Julie Zhuo says going home to write every night is probably how she got into her writing practice.
  10. Why Did Julie Zhuo Struggle to Speak Up at Facebook?Julie Zhuo struggled to speak up at Facebook because she cared so much about being part of the whole that she lost a little of herself.

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