From baidu PPT culture to see the promotion of programmers

Promotions and salary increases are desirable to everyone, including programmers. The salary increase of programmers is divided into general adjustment and promotion. The increase of general adjustment is relatively small, mostly around 10%, while the increase of promotion is relatively large, usually around 20%, and some companies can even reach 30%, and 30% increase is equivalent to a job-hopping. So if you want to get a raise, you still have to get promoted.

Different companies have different levels, such as Baidu’s T6, Alibaba’s P7 and Tencent’s T3.1. These three levels are similar, Baidu called senior engineer, Ali called technical expert, Tencent called senior engineer, in fact, the essence is the same. BAT, as the wind vane and birthplace of the Domestic Internet, has also influenced a large number of companies in programmer rating, which are more or less in the shadow of BAT.

One of the issues that should be noted in the promotion of programmers is how to get talented people promoted, which is actually a difficult problem. A promotion window will have a lot of people to participate in the selection, but not everyone can pass, promotion is the elimination rate. In my experience, this elimination rate is around 50-60%, which means that half of the people will fail to get promoted.

BAT’s promotion process is very similar, among which Baidu’s promotion process has aroused great suspicion and is laughingly called PPT company. Baidu employees are also labeled as “only capable of writing PPT, but unable to do practical things”. As ridiculous as it may seem, there’s a reason. In Baidu, every employee who wants to be promoted has to write a PPT to explain his/her work, and then explain his/her PPT to a group of unfamiliar senior engineering judges. After the PPT presentation, the judges will give a score to the employee, and finally determine the promotion list according to the score from high to low. As the judges and staff are not familiar with each other, the judges can only score according to the quality of PPT. In other words, it is difficult to get high marks for good performance but bad PPT writing. This phenomenon is known as baidu PPT culture.

Some people say: the judges can refer to the candidate’s immediate superior evaluation, who is the best evaluation will be promoted. As someone who has been a judge many times, I can only say that this idea is naive. As anyone who’s ever been a judge knows, you can’t trust the judgment of your immediate superior. Because in the comments, his subordinates are all skilled, easy-going, for the company has made a great contribution, are more than a cow force, looking at all want to laugh.

Baidu PPT culture will be criticized and ridicule, the reason is also very obvious. Because many hard-working employees are not good at expressing themselves and writing PPT, it is difficult for them to be promoted, which causes great injustice. And because of the nature of programmers, there are many of them.

In fact, the weakness of PPT culture lies in the lack of senior judges. In some high-level promotions, such as baidu’S T6 and Alibaba’s P7, the judges are higher-level engineers, who are already scarce and pieced together from various parts of the company. As a result, the judges and candidates are not only unfamiliar, but probably not in the same technical field. Since we don’t know each other very well, and the candidate’s immediate superior can’t be trusted, you tell me: If you were a judge, what would you do? I tell you, there is no choice but to judge yourself based on the candidate’s powerpoint presentation.

Given the obvious drawbacks of powerpoint culture, why do many companies still use it? As far as I know, PPT culture not only exists in Baidu, many companies have PPT presentation link. Existence is reasonable, which shows that PPT culture must have a reason to exist.

Let’s think about it. If promotion is not decided by PPT presentation, there is another option: department nomination, promotion list is all selected by the department, and the leader actually decides who can be promoted. For example, there are 10 people in the department who want to be promoted, but there are only 5 places. If you are not selected, do you have any idea about the leader? Sometimes, leaders prefer subordinates who are competent and know how to deal with people. If employees who write code don’t understand the rules of the workplace and aren’t considered “core” by their bosses, they may not get promoted. Let me ask you: Do you know any examples of this happening? Is that fair?

I think departmental nominations are even more unfair, once you are not “core”, you are not even qualified to reply. In the way of PPT promotion, everyone can try at least twice, and the result of oral defense is not controlled by the superior. No matter whether it is “core” or not, as long as there is a chance to speak PPT, we will all stand at the same starting line.

But you have to write a powerpoint!

I think PPT defense is the most fair way of promotion at present, he provides everyone with a fair competition runway, depending on who wrote a good report PPT. Can not change the rules to adapt to the rules, everyone should pay attention to PPT, everyone should cultivate the ability to write PPT. PPT represents a person’s expression and self-presentation ability, believe me, never underestimate it, or you will suffer in the future.

From now on, stop looking down on powerpoint culture, okay?

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