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. She grew up in a Chinese household, a much more collectivist culture than the US, and she had always straddled both lines. She can see what is great about collectivism and what is great about liberal western democracy, and she is biased more one way than the other.

Coming into Facebook, the same instinct made it very hard to speak up in meetings and very hard even to have an opinion. Asked what she thought about something, she would turn the question around and ask what everyone around her thought, then curate an opinion. She still went back to which view was more her own leaning, and she took a lot of care to summarize it properly because she felt her job was for the greater good.

While she was part of Facebook she never actually knew what she was outside the company. She was just asking what the company needed her to do. When her manager asked what she wanted to work on next half, she answered that she did not know and asked what the manager needed her to work on. She traces a lot of the pattern to early childhood and her collectivist upbringing.