Reprinted -- I have a dream -- talk about technology-driven product innovation and Web Front-end

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It has been a bit frustrating recently due to some issues. It is convenient or inconvenient to say.

A few years ago, I had a dream to become a first-class engineer, concentrate on the technology, have extraordinary development capabilities, can stand alone, can become a trusted technology. I believe that the right to speak is directly proportional to the ability, and the technology flow is a respectable direction.

Later, some things changed my mind. I realized that strong technology is also a senior technician, who is a "good" under the command, and not a "handsome ". The success or failure on the battlefield depends largely on the "handsome" strategy and command. It is useless to "be" again. Guan Yu Zhang Fei is well-known. The most important thing is not their personal abilities, but because there is a Zhuge Liang in the camp who can win the battle all the way and put them in Zhang Jiao, Liu, and Gong Sun Yu, will be drowned. "Shuai", because of its role importance, naturally has the highest right to speak. If you are lucky enough to meet a reliable handsome guy, it is a very lucky thing, however, if you are lucky enough to meet a handsome guy, you will be arrogant.

There is a problem here-the level of competence is directly proportional to the size of the discourse power. That's right, but the weights of the discourse power vary with positions. A junior product manager who does not understand anything has a lower say than a senior engineer. No matter whether the engineers admit it or not, the company's senior management will place greater hopes on product personnel, believing that the idea of product personnel is the key to determining product success or failure, not technology. Yes, they also know the importance of technology, but that is not the most important, never.

I am not trying to tell you that the company is not unfair to technicians. In fact, I agree that "products are more important than technology" and "handsome" is more important than "yes. The truth is there. If technology cannot be converted into products to make money, it will be worthless. When products earn money, the company can survive, reward the product, and pay attention to luxury technology research. Some seemingly high-end jobs are actually luxury jobs. They do not have such jobs in small and medium-sized companies. Only some large companies can afford technical experts.

Technical experts are not the same as front-line engineers because they don't have to go deep into the front-line programming, and they don't have to work overtime to catch up with the progress. Li Yanhong does not complain that few people are still writing code on Baidu t5? However, technical experts also need to charge themselves and draw the distance from frontline engineers. They cannot be experts. Over the past few years, we have found a very unhealthy situation: technical experts like to study something that seems very impractical to me, such as browser Fault Tolerance Mechanisms and wheel rebuilding. It seems that people are not clear but sharp. However, I think this is a dangerous signal. People may make an "unclear but intense" comment to prove that your research direction is high, but more likely it is that you are going astray and enjoying yourself... The right things should be people-friendly. At least in your active circles, it will not make people feel high-end, but they will not be interested in learning. This is an unhealthy trend.

I always think that "not practical, directly equivalent to useless ". Practical things can be pursued by some people. @ Mi my has always criticized me as "the learning is too utilitarian. The learning of technology should be interest-oriented, so you don't need to care too much about it if it is not practical ". I keep my comments on this. I have learned a lot of technologies, and many of them have spent a lot of time, but they are useless now. the foreseeable future cannot be re-checked. The knowledge of IT is really too vast. If any field is plunged into IT, IT will find that IT is a bottomless pit, and IT has spent a lot of energy to learn something that cannot be used, it is unwise to learn the knowledge you actually need. Choosing "what to learn" is more important than "how to learn". This is my experience over the past few years. Practicality is very important. If the technical experts can only get a few comments for their hard work, but few people follow up, it is time to reflect on "is not practical.

Back to the question of "being handsome" between products and engineers. We often say "Innovation", but there are two ways to "Innovation:

1) product-driven innovation-there is no need for too new things in technology. The appearance of the product satisfies the user requirements that a previous product cannot satisfy. For example, group buying, sns, and Weibo are all such product innovations. They all create a new product form from scratch, and do not require much technical changes. This innovation requires collecting and analyzing user needs and is the strength of product managers.

2) technology-driven innovation-technology-driven innovation, such as google Maps, gmail, and youtube. Such products require strong technical skills and are promoted by technical-sensitive engineers. Product managers without technical skills cannot take the initiative to think of such innovation.

In the current situation in China, the product manager circle rarely comes from a division, so the overall quality is at the level of "only a few products can be copied back to micro-innovation". I didn't mean to offend this group, in fact, I have been working as a product manager for more than a year. It is true that there have been no heavyweight product innovations like group buying and sns in China. Of course, this is also related to another problem-the product manager becomes the boss's microphone, and the company's senior management has clearly pointed out what functions it wants when setting up an item, and pointed out the specific reference website, leaving little space for the product manager. Therefore, it is difficult to count on how much product innovation the product manager has made.

Front-line engineers are exhausted in the development line, and there is not much opportunity for them to play. Therefore, the responsibility for technology-driven product innovation should be borne by technical experts who work relatively easily and with high salaries. Over the past few years, server engineers have handed in a beautiful answer-cloud computing. What are front-end users doing when the server end is so hard to innovate in a field that makes everyone shine? Busy nodejs? Is that their job? Is it interesting to develop an express program based on node and use js syntax to stir up the leftovers that the server has been playing for a few years ago? Or re-create a big and comprehensive js framework, and then let alone, give a confession to the company, and have a face to the outside. How many users outside the company will give up jQuery, and YUI and ext will switch to this new wheel? Does the wheel rely on administrative force to force promotion within the company or are engineers taking the initiative to use it? Everyone knows.

It makes no sense not to make some qualitative changes. The show and show will not show this circle. Only when the entire circle is strong will it attract the attention of outsiders. How many technical experts can be mixed up without the company, because the circle is not strong and the market demand is insufficient. Few companies need high-end talents. We should assume the responsibility of the front-end, use product innovation to prove the value and potential of the circle, and give us the opportunity to complete the transformation from "moving" to "handsome. I hope that one day, there will be a large number of front-end architects in the market, and there will be a large number of front-end product managers. The average salary of front-end engineers is no worse than that of current ios engineers, front-end engineers do not need to enter the thirty-year-old transformation crisis too early due to insufficient technical depth.

 

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I have a dream-talk about technology-driven product innovation and web Front-end