Mop R & D team: Technology paranoia in the Internet era (full text)

For the title of China's first interactive entertainment portal, the R & D team of dozens of MOP is not huge, but the team is constantly introducing Personalized Requirements to satisfy tens of millions of users, keep putting yourself at the forefront of the Web 2.0 platform. What gives them the ability to respond so quickly? What keeps them ahead of the technology? What is the difference between the leader of this team? With these questions, we started a conversation with Xu Chaojun, vice president of qianrubber interactive Internet basic business department, and Huang Jing, Technical Director.

Apparently this was a successful interview. During the entire interview, almost everyone had no pause. At the end of the last question, it was nearly dusk, everyone was surprised that we had been talking for three hours in a small cafe. For reporters, it is not so much an interview as a training. throughout the interview, Xu Chaojun (hereinafter referred to as Xu) and Huang Jing (hereinafter referred to as Huang) both of them are technical personnel, but they are often rational.Famous sayingThe "boss" gave reporters an example of how to conduct R & D management. After the "Lecture", our two reporters sighed for a long time when they visited their workplace. Without the common compartment of Microsoft and other companies, dozens of computers were arranged in an open Hall, in addition, the display screen is full of liquid crystal, and the electric fan beside it is buzzing. From time to time, some people come to ask Xu Chaojun how many people have been recruited in the past few days. Are there any suitable suggestions for him. Does Web 2.0 create a shared atmosphere for the interaction R & D team of Thousand Oaks, or does it mean Web 2.0 (MOP Forum )? In any case, I like this shared and open environment.

Reporter: What do you think of yourself?
Xu: I can endure hardships. This may be related to your own growth environment. I am from a small town in Hubei Province. It seems that people with such backgrounds can suffer hardships. But there are limitations. Now we need to cultivate our own macro views on the world, such as the Wall Street financial market. When I was in high school, my wish was to enter a university. When I was in college, I wanted to build a villa and a sports car, but I could do more things on my own. This is what we usually call "small farmer consciousness". Breakthroughs in this consciousness will lead to greater development. People who have made great achievements do not have the idea of being wealthy and secure. Chen has a very ambitious goal, that is, to be the most valuable Internet company in China.

Reporter: Which of the most important issues do you think your team has not solved?
Xu: Do something about the future and stay far-sighted. Although sometimes there is no energy to do it, it will be of great help. In addition, some long-term technical investments, such as R & D of basic technologies, may be irrelevant to the current business, but will be of great help in a year.
Yellow: missing. Many people are overloaded with work. Although everyone is very active, they cannot work like this for a long time.

Reporter: What do you most want to say to your R & D team?
Xu: Pay attention to technology first. The Internet can only be innovated through technology, which is the only foundation. The second is to pay attention to the body, like me, which runs 3 km every day. Then, we need to have personal technical plans.

Reporter: What kind of person do you think Xu Chaojun is?
Huang: energetic (Xu added: a typical type B Blood character). He focuses more on cultivating subordinates and has a strong pressure capacity.

Reporter: Could you give Xu Chaojun a suggestion?
Huang: he needs to relax. Don't be too tired.
Xu: I really caught myself too tight, and now it's quite violent. Now I have realized this, so I am also urging the strengthening of the company's culture. The bigger part is, but how to manage it well is still the role of culture in the end.

Team collaboration
Reporter: how much credit do you earn from this team?
Xu: It depends on everyone.

Reporter: Huang Jing, what do you think is Xu's credit?
Huang: it is very important to have a core in the team. He can give everyone motivation and belief. For example, if I want to do something well enough, he will directly remind me how to handle it. During a group meeting, he will also inspire everyone to tell everyone what they have done is meaningful, including the meaning of the company and the significance of personal growth. He attaches great importance to the growth of his subordinates in this environment. These are very important to the core of a team, because they will give everyone a positive feeling: everyone has a strong belief that we must do the best thing, the most popular things.

Reporter: What kind of management form do you adopt for the team?
Xu: Someone is dedicated to this issue. The first is you (the lead), the second is you outside, and the third is you in the team. The first case is that you will not be able to do anything without you. The second case is that you are separated from the team. The third case is that you become a part of the team. The second one is good, but not suitable for the IT industry. In this case, we cannot hear the feedback from grassroots personnel. For example, some people complain that the air conditioner is too hot and the pressure is too high because the project is not smooth.

Reporter: Do you have your own office now?
Xu: No. We have four o (CEO, coo, CSO, CFO) in one office. Basically, we are like HP, and their President does not have an office now. The advantage is that it can be integrated. If you have an office, you will be farther and farther away from everyone. For example, you don't know how to tell jokes or start a party. I like HP. HP emphasizes "starting from the beginning of people," and "cultivating employee loyalty. At four points, I think that HP is particularly right. We should first give employees the opportunity to do things, and then give them the opportunity to make money. The salary we give to employees is definitely not the highest in the industry. It mainly emphasizes his sense of identity in our career. The more employees with higher levels are like this, the higher their salaries will not be given to them at the beginning, this is because the mentality of a person has changed. The result is that he is attracted by high salaries, rather than his recognition of his career. The same is true for Hewlett-Packard, where the salary is 80% of that of other companies, and the emphasis is on recognition. The third is the opportunity to learn. No matter how busy we are, we will conduct training. The last point is the opportunity for promotion, which is responsible for the employee's career. For example, if an employee has worked very hard and worked very hard, but you do not have a career plan, and he is still an engineer after year 34, then as a supervisor, you are incompetent. Drucker makes sense. His interview manager often asks, "What do you think is the most important thing as a manager ?", Many people talk about management, authorization, or reporting, but Drucker thinks that the most important thing for managers is to help employees achieve their goals in life. Other management content is the basic responsibility.

Reporter: I understand why you (Huang Jing) have worked so hard.
Huang: there is a lot of pressure. If I am not doing well, he will respond (Laugh ). Now, we have paid great attention to sharing new technologies, not just by ourselves, but by getting them to the meeting.
Xu: I write a blog every day. Sometimes I forget to add it the next day.

Reporter: Are there any special and humane aspects for employees at work?
Yellow: There are many. In the past, when I didn't manage so many people, I had to work hard, but now it's different. Some people cannot motivate them if you don't pay attention to them. Later, we adjusted our organizational structure, put the right people in the right positions, and made some promotion adjustments, which played a significant role, which is also good for personal growth. These are the suggestions he gave me. I still remember that when I had closed development and was not busy, I went to the mountain together. At that time, I had not climbed the mountain for a long time, and all of them climbed to the top of the mountain with his encouragement. This is indeed a spiritual encouragement.

Reporter: What kind of philosophy do you have in team management?
Xu: respect for everyone. We respect everyone very much and are equal. From the perspective of doing things, there may be levels, but they are equal. For example, when we are in a meeting, who is going to sit in the room first? It doesn't matter if we have a quarrel during the discussion. It's all for work. There was another project where we discussed website positioning. At this time, a very common employee said a good idea and we didn't even think of it. As he said, the effect is very good, that is, the idea of Web2.0, and the root of the grass.

Reporter: What are the best and worst comments you hear from employees?
Xu: I used to have a very strict management style. I can make other people cry. However, people who have been crying have now grown up and become very popular in the industry. I still have dinner at home every holiday. I didn't hear much from others, but they often asked me in turn, "Why do you usually go to your home in college ?". The negative comments I have heard come from my boss. For software, quality is the most important. I used to build a project. I knew that someone was not doing well, but I kept asking him to do it. Then there was a problem with quality. My boss told me that quality is the most important, and quality-related people and things must be put on hold. This is also a kind of respect for the existing personnel. You cannot invite bad people in. If you are nice to him, you are not respectful to the existing good people. This is the only thing I have been criticized for since my work.

Reporter: What is the most important thing to solve during this period?
Xu: recruit people. The second is to solve the concept of the team, and the third is to find a person with a strong experience in the industry. Another thing is to maintain innovation and ideas. Sometimes we need to cultivate ourselves to have a new idea every day. Of course, it is about products.

Reporter: How do you maintain your innovation capability?
Xu: Let's see how others do it. Sometimes competitors will tell you. The network is under great pressure. Sometimes I feel especially ashamed when I don't think of a competitor.
Huang: independent thinking is very important. I used to read Sun Zhengyi's book and he was looking for its development direction. He wanted to develop some patents and spent several minutes every day thinking about how to put a few things to see if he could spell out something, as a result, what he made for the first time was a sound translator. Later, he partnered with others and became his first barrel of gold.

Reporter: The World Cup is approaching. Have you made any adjustments to the employee's working hours during this period?
Xu: our work time is flexible.
Huang: I think efficiency is the most important, as long as it is efficient.

R & D Management
Reporter: if there is a new idea, how can you implement it?
Xu: Generally, it takes one to two months. However, our current website 5q.com only took two weeks.
Yellow: Right. It takes less than two weeks for the 5q website to go from the design draft to the website construction, to the website content.

Reporter: how can we ensure the implementation is completed within two weeks?
Huang: We used to make a huge project called "circle of friends" on the maopu website. After accumulating some new things and deciding to make the 5q product, we quickly concentrated some of the main technical forces in this project. Work overtime late every night and work together. Because the time is really tight, and the boss does not give time, the technical team can only die for the enemy.

Reporter: How do you pull people to join the new project?
Huang: place the strongest person in a specific project. After the project is stable, it is handed over to other people for maintenance. Because the R & D tasks of Internet companies can never be completed, we must set a priority level. Team members must acknowledge this priority level. For example, if you have three departments looking for you at the same time, they are all very anxious, but you must first take the highest priority.
Xu: Our team has the first echelon and the second echelon. People in the first echelon have special experience and special recognition for our career. They have been working together for a long time and share the same values. Many important tasks are undertaken by members of the first echelon.

Reporter: What should I do if a person encounters multiple tasks during R & D?
Huang: This involves the structure of a product. At the beginning, there were not many of us. When several projects came over, they used a matrix-like structure. For example, he was responsible for the function module first, later, he was responsible for the project and so on. However, it was proved that there was a problem with this, so the adjustment was still reasonable according to the project.

Reporter: How do you deal with the pressure on employees?
Xu: We pay great attention to communication. For the stressed members, on the one hand, it will help them relieve the pressure, on the other hand, it will also tell them good experiences, or a way to deal with complicated things, so that they can actively cope with difficulties. At the same time, we also learned from some great companies, such as Microsoft. There will be a technical plan every six months. For example, if employees want to study the technology or improve their management, we will adjust our work based on their growth needs. This gives him great confidence.

Reporter: What is the company's growth plan for these people?
Xu: there are basically two routes. One is technology management, and the other is pure technology. Technical Management may be a senior engineer at the beginning, then a group leader, a Technical Manager, responsible for the overall project, then to the Senior Technical Manager, and then the technical director, such as Huang Jing. The pure technical path is engineers, senior engineers, technical experts, and a System Architect. Now we will go to this technical expert to solve the problem very quickly.

REPORTER: It is said that the organizational structure of the cat flutter is the most similar to that of Google. How can this problem be understood?
Xu: basically, small teams in large companies. There are many people in the company, but there are very few people in every project. For example, Gmail is made by two people. Why can two people make something like Gmail? Because they have a complete set of system support. In fact, the mail layer is very complicated, but the company has already helped them lay the foundation. For example, for our 5q project, there are only four or five people.

Reporter: What role does everyone assume in the 5q team?
Xu: This is an organizational structure problem. Each project has a unified product manager. For example, if the market share is not reached, contact the product manager. The Technical Director is responsible for coordination. So there are two lines in this regard. Our architecture is similar to Procter & Gamble, for example, who is responsible for rejoice and who is responsible for haifeisi. We have taken a long process to form this architecture. In the past, we managed this process very strictly, that is, to submit all the changes required for the product, then the technical staff will solve the problem. However, this cannot keep up with the changes, and the demand for products is often backlog and cannot be processed. Later, we made adjustments. The products and technologies were put together. There was a unified product manager responsible for product planning, and a technical director responsible for Architecture performance issues, in this way, the efficiency can be maximized. We emphasize Job Management for small teams. Another advantage of this architecture is to reduce the communication cost.

Reporter: Currently, many websites use open-source frameworks. Which criteria do you choose based on?
Huang: pragmatism. I think what is important is not the framework, but the overall architecture design. Of course, before we decide to use a framework, we will have a small project to first test and have a good understanding of all the parts of the framework, rather than using it. In this way, when a problem occurs, you can directlyCode.

Reporter: What is your biggest feeling as the leader of the team?
Xu: One of the characteristics of the Internet is that there will be new things constantly, especially in the United States. Without the accumulation of traditional knowledge, we have completely broken the previous knowledge structure. Therefore, we need to adjust the knowledge structure in a timely manner, keep learning for life. What worries me most is that I don't have any new ideas on that day, so I can't lead the team any more.

Talent
Reporter: Is there anything interesting recently in the recruitment process?
Xu: I recently went to Huazhong University of Science and Technology to give a speech. I found that students are very active in thinking and sensitive to technology, for example, a student asked me why I had such a hairstyle (haha) during my speech ). After working for a long time and returning to campus, we will find that students are very positive and technical-sensitive, such as Bt and Web 2.0.

Reporter: What are the treatments for technical personnel?
Xu: compared to other types of jobs, we place great importance on technical engineers. For example, a 40-year-old companyProgramClerk Chen (Chen Yizhou) will also call his teacher.

Reporter: What kind of questions do you often have during the interview.
Huang: I will always askAlgorithmIf he thinks these problems are useless, then this person has problems. These basic things are very important to technicians. Although they are not often used in their work, they will affect their way of thinking about problems.
Xu: I mainly look at this person's conduct.

Reporter: What do new students usually impress you?
Xu: current students have high personal expectations. When I was recruiting, I valued the fact that the overall quality of the student in the student group had reached the top 5%. You need to know that in a good group, the top 5% people sometimes only need a short period of time, for example, a month or two, they can be more than many people who have been working in the company for a long time.

Be a technology-loving person
Reporter: Please give it project manager and Technical Director some suggestions.
Xu and Huang: the first one must have ambitious goals and the goal and determination to do big things;
Second, you must learn to authorize your colleagues to grow with you;
Third, we must maintain a positive attitude and be able to mobilize people around us to continue to work under pressure;
Fourth, we should pay attention to communication, so that conflicts and puzzles may disappear early in communication;
Fifth, we should study for life, especially for IT practitioners;
The last and most important thing is to always love technology. technical details are understandable, but the direction cannot be wrong.

Reporter: Please give me some suggestions.
Xu: I only have one suggestion for technicians. I also mentioned that I love technology. If I don't love technology, I am not responsible for my career. When we look at whether a technician is qualified, we mainly look at his passion for technology, rather than his character, because we believe that people who love technology are relatively simple. What is love technology? Here is an example of my company. There was an employee who did not go anywhere during the May Day, so he was playing tricks at home. When I came back from vacation, I asked him how much he was doing. He came up with a molded product, which surprised everyone. No one asked him to do it quickly without a strict deadline, but he did it. I think this is love. Destiny is in your own hands. I believe that everything else, including raising your salary and entering the management layer, is reasonable. We also need to know where we are currently and in which direction we need to work in the next step. Now many domestic programmers are not very clear about our position. Our company still has 40-Year-Old programmers, that is to say, we need to find our core competitiveness. There is also a story about the fact that a person who makes a market is very profitable and wants to make a sales transformation. The leader gave him an example, saying that there are currently 0.2 million people doing sales nationwide, there are only 20 thousand people in the market, and the number of people you need to compete with after the transformation. He immediately understood that after several years he eventually became a market expert. This is also true in our IT field. There are many management tasks, but not many technical experts.

Reporter: Please give some suggestions to students
Xu, Huang:
First of all, we should pay attention to the study of basic courses. Of course, many college students do not realize this during their studies. This was also the case for me. But now, looking back, those algorithms, networks, compilation, operating systems, and other courses are very important.
The second is practice. Of course, the practice here is related to technology. The best way is to find a programming-related career, start from running the dragon, and accumulate professional experience;
The third is to develop a perfect personality, such as positive personality. I have noticed that some students have been very mature during their studies and are able to withstand the pressure well. It is also natural to communicate with others, such students will have more opportunities in their future work.
At present, we are also establishing an intern program for college students. If we do well after graduation, we can work directly here. It also hopes to provide some practical opportunities for college students.

Reporter: as the technical director, what suggestions do you most want to give to your team members?
Huang: Everyone's situation is different. However, what I often say during meetings is that we must be paranoid about technology. We must understand the value of technology and let ourselves explore deeper, so that our value will grow bigger and bigger. The so-called technical talents are just exploring the problem at a deeper level.

Reporter: What do you want to say to the team most?
Huang: You are amazing.
Reporter: too much, right?
Huang: Truth (Be serious ). Sometimes, even if we had just added a one-night class, we were able to invest in new work very quickly the next day. Everyone was very active and united.

Reporter: Do you have any questions in today's interview?
Xu: programmers start a business. Nowadays, many college students or IT people are talking about entrepreneurship. But what talents are suitable for entrepreneurship is also a question for those who want to start a business: If you have 1 million, how much are you willing to start a business? The premise is that there are no other material conditions, such as houses and cars.
Character determines fate. When Chen Tianqiao gave up his job with a monthly salary of 30 thousand yuan, he decided to create a job with 0.5 million yuan. As a result, Chen Tianqiao created the grand glory of today. I also met a friend who sold his house, rented a place for his family, and brought several people to start a business in Guizhou when he was pregnant. Four years later, he successfully started his business. Therefore, if you do not have a strong character, it is best not to easily choose the road of entrepreneurship. What suits you best is the best path.

(Reference answer: if you are willing to use the 1 million full Department for entrepreneurship after some thought, it means that you have the entrepreneurial personality conditions. If you still have some retained skills, for example, you can only create 0.5 million startups, the other 0.5 million may fail .)

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