The way to upgrade Vice President: Join a start-up company to fight for nine years

Not everyone is willing to choose a company that works in a residential startup as the first job, although a garage startup now looks like a handsome thing. What's more, if it was 9 years ago?

2003, a company called the Thousand Oak Interactive Enterprise has not made a later renren, more than 10 of people's entrepreneurial team in Beijing Xizhimen train North station next to a red residential building in a three, nest inside the office. Topaz was a second-year graduate student at Tsinghua University, but he decided to join the entrepreneurial team.

He once watched the rise and fall of internet companies. When the dotcom bubble burst in 2001, topaz a part-time job while reading in Tom's net. Only after a 11 long vacation, and then back to the company, Tom Net share price plummeted. Failed to catch the first wave of the internet, Topaz was very sorry that he did not want to miss the second time.

In the oak interaction, Topaz also had a lot of Tsinghua students interested in the start-up company, but they took a look at the office environment then went, "because there is really not like a company."

But Topaz stayed. He said he didn't care.

In China, foreign companies and private enterprises to work with his peers, 2 years old, even if the elderly, 5 years is a cow. and graduated for 9 years has been working in the same company, from a pioneering business to see the company listed on the less people. Topaz.

Topaz, born in 1981, has been changing the title of the interactive, from the Wireless division of Technical Experts, technical director, product Technology Senior Director, all the time to vice president of the company. Topaz is now responsible for the Renren PC part has more than 600 employees, the company also moved from residential buildings, but he still does not have his own office, he and colleagues, like a work station. His privileges are reflected in the 26-storey corner, a conference room called "Command", which is not normally accepted. He could go in and make a personal call, or talk to an employee.

As one of the company's top managers, Topaz works more than 12 hours a day and has endless meetings-except to attend weekly meetings for each major project, as well as a pep rally for project projects and milestones.

Learning to meet is one of the skills that managers need to master, even though many of their peers are still in the mood of complaining and aversion to meetings. Topaz thinks this is something managers have to face, "meetings are part of a team's communication, not simply reporting what you do every day, but listening to team members talk about what's going on, how to solve them, what's not going to work, and how to make a decision. ”

Every night seven or eight o'clock, he would make a round of offices on the 26 floor, and if most of the people in the office hadn't finished work, "I'd be Happy". Topaz will take advantage of this time to see what colleagues are doing to understand the project progress, "of course, the delay is more, but if I postpone the redeployment of human resources." ”

Mastering the process is not easy. In the case of limited resources, first of all to ensure that important projects completed as soon as possible, secondary projects can be pressed back. The internet is changing fast, and Topaz can feel the pressure of competing companies every day. Every day in Silicon Valley comes a variety of new ideas, and his domestic peers are eager to make copies. "It's too late to catch up." We've seen too much of this. He wants his colleagues to be more proactive.

Topaz often work overtime. He did not have much time of his own, want to calm down thinking also get after 9 o'clock in the evening. Email,rss, he wants to quickly identify the information and determine what is useful, "I can share it with team members tomorrow!" He thought.

Topaz was the first to do the technical background, just entered the time, he like a geek, delve into the latest network technology, do a lot of projects. Later he discovered that instead of doing a project well, he decided to decide what kind of project he was doing-he was not a geek. In 2003, he began to focus on a company called "Friendster", the originator of a social network. Facebook was not online at the time. The social expansion logic of the site, consistent with Facebook later, does not emphasize real-name relationships.

He was excited to send an e-mail to Chen, explaining the concept of the site, he asked Chen: "Do we want to follow this line of thought to do?"

So there is a later renren. Since then, he has begun to pay more attention to the Internet industry trends and learn from the burgeoning Internet companies, such as Facebook and MySpace, who will look at how these pioneers solve the needs of users who are not easily addressed in their own explorations.

Discovering the needs of users is a good change. Now there is a title is very popular, called "Product manager." They must understand the product, can communicate with the technical personnel, but also must understand the market, the marketing. This is simply a very confident title, and one of the important tasks of owning this title is to discover the needs of users. Topaz is now a product manager who needs to see more prospects. It was a great turning point in his career.

He is responsible for the company's core business-products, technology and operations. He also needs to collaborate across departments to find people who can help him. His work and life boundaries are not so obvious in the busy world. Every morning 10 o'clock to work, 10 o'clock in the evening work, he was tired and high. Not everyone can have this opportunity, he caught up with the internet wave.

Anand Raman, senior editor at Harvard Business Review, is not surprised that the Chinese market is always able to offer a variety of senior positions to young people, "You know, there is nothing impossible in a rapidly growing market like China." "These senior positions may be favored in the United States for older people, who have more management experience than those with a lot of ideas, which will make them more comfortable in times of crisis."

Topaz Face is a huge team of 600 people. He was puzzled by one thing: "The more people are more efficient, the lower, everyone has their own ideas, the idea of these people to unify, to build an efficient management system, very difficult." "Everyone company's development momentum is very fast, in order to make up for their own management experience, Topaz can only spend more time with a certain level of people to communicate." The top and founder of other companies are the topaz of the most current exchanges, and he has learned so much from them. His circle of friends was also mostly older, five years and 10 years older than him. These seniors sometimes know more about what he's saying than their age friends.

He even wondered if he was going to change his temper. Topaz is not a stern person and seldom gets angry at subordinates. But now, "being bad" is not a step that cannot be taken. "If the employee's ability is not good, or the attitude is negative, pull down the face to let him adjust or leave, this is the manager must do." ”