• One of Meta’s longest-serving executives shared her thoughts on the 19 years she worked with Mark Zuckerberg.
• Product Manager Naomi Gleit spoke about the lessons of his leadership on “Lenny’s Podcast.”

A Meta executive recently reflected on some of the lessons she’s learned from nearly two decades of working with the company. co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

Naomi Gleit was employee No. 29 at the company when it was still called Facebook; today, she is responsible for Meta’s products and its second longest serving employee after Zuckerberg himself. She spoke about her experience working with Zuckerberg for over 19 years during a episode from “Lenny’s Podcast” released on Sunday.

“I always say Mark is the learner, not the know-it-all. He’s the fastest person to perfect his skills of anyone I’ve ever met,” she said. Gleit cited as an example when Zuckerberg started learning Mandarin and became fluent in 8th grade within a year as one of his annual personal challenges.

Gleit also recalled Zuckerberg’s “four steps to approaching life” from about a decade ago, when they were teaching an after-school class on how to start a business at a middle school in East Palo Alto.

She remembered a lesson they taught in that class, with Mark writing on the board:

1) Love yourself.

2) Only then can you truly serve others.

3) Focus on what you can control.

4) For these things, never give up.

“In that you can see some of what I think we all see in Mark, like, for these things, he never gives up, he has that side of him and it makes sense,” Gleit said . “For me, number 3 is definitely the hardest, which is ‘Focus on what you can control’ because I think I can probably control more things than I actually can .”

Gleit also spoke about Meta’s culture around feedback.

“One thing I think Mark has done really well in general is just having a culture, including within his leadership team, of people giving him feedback,” she said .

“I think a lot of times as you become more successful or you have more fame or you have more wealth, you lose a clear feedback loop and people may not want to be 100% honest with you for various reasons,” she said. added. “And Mark has tried to make sure that he himself has an accurate feedback loop, or that we as a company have a more accurate feedback loop, by surrounding himself and our team leadership and creating a culture of direct and honest feedback.”

Another Meta executive, Technical Director Andrew “Boz” Bosworth, has previously spoken about Zuckerberg’s approach to feedback. Bosworth said Zuckerberg will “more often than not tell you you’re wrong” before asking people what they think of the idea in an effort to “pressure test” it. Often, he will end up implementing the suggested changes, Bosworth said.

Zuckerberg is also known for being blunt in his comments about the company, stating at a 2022 town hall meeting that “rIn reality, there are probably a number of people in the company who should not be here,” Reuters said. reported at the time. A year later,During Zuckerberg’s ‘Year of Efficiency,’ Meta Gave Thousands of Employees Poor Performance Reviews, The Wall Street Journal reported. Layoffs followed as the company’s organizational structure flattened.

Zuck celebrated his company’s 20th anniversary in February and more recently looks back on his two decades at the helm of the tech giant.

“One of the things that I look back on and regret is that I think we accepted other people’s views on some of the things that they said we were doing wrong, or that we were responsible for, and that I don’t actually think we were,” he said last month.

He also spoke about changing one’s public image over the years.

“Being awkward and receiving negative feedback about how I came out definitely made me more cautious and scripted.” Zuckerberg said in July. “It’s still not my favorite, but I’m getting a little more comfortable being myself as I get older.”