How Kevin changed the world

yesterday

Take advantage of the weekend to talk about a topic: beginner’s mind


Last week, BY chance, I saw the video of graduation defense.


At the same time, I thought of the things and people that I had experienced from work to entrepreneurship.


This post is written for feeling, without any nice typography.



I still remember that I was working on a tank war game, which was written with the page before and after Java development. The project didn’t take long, about 2 months for self-study and exploration.


This has become the back to do product manager foreshadowing


Graduation defense time is not long, just 3 minutes 59 seconds.


Since I majored in the Internet of Things at the beginning, there are only three major directions for teachers, students and cities


There are 3 types of career direction:


The first category:


Embedded development engineer, SCM development engineer


The second category:


Front-end, backstage development, algorithm development engineer


The third category:


Sales, non-technical research and development positions


You see that with limited resources and conditions, the choices we make depend on our vision, our perception.


So I always like the saying, “The world is so big, why not go and see it?”


Listen to and see the world more, can make more cost-effective choices. Less detour, less step pit, from the professional to the job is believed to be everyone’s history of blood and tears.


With limited resources on campus, it’s hard to get the idea of an Internet career. Not to mention specific job skills for product managers, operations, and interaction designers.


It is good to have goals, but from campus to social transformation, can we split the goals into landable and abstract steps to step on, in fact, is the most difficult.


Thinking back to five years ago when I started to write my official account, I never thought that writing would become a part of my life.


At least it was just a temporary transition for myself. At that time, I wanted to be a product manager and then the final product director.


I didn’t think that writing would change my life.


At the same time, it has also created a community that affects 1 million product managers in China. However, it is not easy for people to know the stories inside except for the superficial appearance.





The dots, lines and planes of life





If the life of every particle degree: day


In the smallest unit we can calculate, 80 years is the end point. We have about 30,000 days of use. I quite like the words of Zhang Nan, president of Douyin:


Put aside the 10,000 days for growing up and the 10,000 days for getting old, and most of your life is only 10,000 days


If electricity can be wired up in a week/month


In that year, a number of lines end up forming a plane


You never know if this point today will link into a line that will eventually reach you.


So when you decide to do something, at least the starting point is there.


It depends on the time and resources you put in.


Time is a strange thing. Everyone in this world has the same amount of time. We live in parallel time, you have 24 hours and everyone else has 24 hours.


But there are two types of products that are popular today: save time and kill time products


One is to serve the time is not enough, improve efficiency


The other is too much time and boredom.


This weekend, for example, is a combination of dots and lines, depending on how you spend your 48-hour weekend.


So in Shenzhen, I chose the method of kill time and invited six product managers to do this.


“Since you study products, why not see what product managers do in other companies?”


So seven product managers I recruited from college and former colleagues at the company did it in their spare time on weekends.


I remember when the seven of us were there, we were all joking that everyone else’s company had all kinds of departments, and we were all product managers.


At the beginning, due to limited conditions, we could only communicate through wechat voice. Periodic voice calls every week and offline meetings every month.


Because there was no office, COCO, a milk tea shop, became the place for our first offline meeting in 2016.




Forget the spiritual level of joy and happiness, use the weekend 48 hours our life gradually changed line


If the vitality of love comes from the first love, the vitality of friendship comes from the common goal


Fair-weather friends, evil friends together just for fun.


But ask a few friends to do something that they might struggle for a lifetime, and the friendship will stay fresh and permanent


Because from PMTalk this point and began to gradually have a number of points connected, gradually point more lines become.


This road to now will soon be the company’s third anniversary. The team was founded 4 years ago, but only 2 of the original 7 fighters are still alive (including me).


The iron disc of flowing soldiers, there is no feast without breaking up


Entrepreneurship is the same, and each of the above 7 people are separated, and even the parting of the partners behind, are as sad as brokenhearted


But the only thing that doesn’t change is that PMTalk is growing up, whether he or she is there or not. This matter always has to be done by someone, ONCE I wanted to give up, also want to simply do not start a business, but because there is a thing called beginner’s mind.


Tell me I should go on, it’s just a temporary difficulty in life, but there’s always a way.


I have seen many product managers complain about the lack of development resources, operation and design resources, but in fact, the lack of resources is not the problem, the core problem is whether they have to find resources


Whether inside or outside the company, the three elements in our current society can be composed of the following three parts





Money – power – Connections




So when a product manager can pull together the front end, the back end, the design, and the team, there’s a way to drive in the other two directions.


You do not have money to think of ways to do connections, money to think of ways to find the most cattle, have the right to cash for their own.






Be your own platform, not: “XX product manager of big factory”





Every Saturday in the studio of product manager of Douyin, a friend asked me: “Kevin, do you want to join a large company or a small company after graduation?”


My answer is, “To get into a big company is preferred.”


Unlike studying medicine, teachers and civil servants, students in the Internet industry will face future changes if they choose the Internet.


One of the biggest constants of Internet practitioners is the constant process of iteration and change.


So you see people who have been with the same company for more than four or five years who either have mediocre salaries; Or the lack of Internet ingenuity from the outside.


It’s important to keep building your brand


What I emphasize here is not personal IP. Now many product managers refer to brands as “we media”, “Douyin short videos” and “live bloggers”.


But in fact, the real brand is their own “business.”


I once met a VP of a Fortune 500 company. He said to me, “YOUR PMTalk is still famous in the industry, but if you are just a product manager of Tencent, I will not meet you if you want to talk to me.”


Personal brand platform is the best endorsement and business card. Even if the current cause or occupation is very weak and the company or team’s revenue is thousands of times worse than that of BAT company, at least it is your own, and your decision can change its future appearance.


Your brand is what you live to be.


When I was starting my own business, 20% of recruiters would choose companies with less than 20 employees because small companies would typically encounter the 28 effect of the Internet industry when recruiting.


Therefore, in terms of talent selection, entrepreneurial teams can only spend a lot of time on interviews and recruitment choices.


For a university graduate, there is a huge difference in Internet experience, basic knowledge of the Internet, and even the use of Office software.


If you’re working as a product manager, I recommend thinking about what you have that your company doesn’t give you.




When you leave behind the so-called big factory, you still have your own brand.


The so-called personal responsibility for XX users, XXDAU can only become your brand to enter the next big factory, because HR needs




But it can’t be the brand of your life.


Because the success of XXDAU and XX users does not allow you to bring direct revenue


Therefore, at the beginning of being a product manager, we should first accumulate resources and contacts at work. The second is the judgment of business models and ways of making money


These are two extremely important points.


As for me, with starting my own business, I clearly know that my own brand and platform will be more important than my identity as a big factory.




Not because you are XX big factory how powerful, but because you are able to make decisions for their own brand, responsible person, will have more profit opportunities.


I’m not suggesting that every product manager should start a company


Because starting a business is really not for everyone. From the beginning I mentioned PMTalk’s early team to the year 2020.


As a boss, you’re not a formula manager; Instead, it will be more of a corporate wet nurse, and responsibility will be more important than management.


However, to establish one’s own brand is not equal to starting a company. Now, the rapid development of mobile Internet has given everyone the opportunity to establish their own brand in all walks of life and various platforms


We media, e-commerce and event planning can all become the head players in the industry.




There is no rule that a product manager must become a product director in the future, nor that a product director or boss must be a product manager.


Product managers understand development, operation and business model naturally because of their work. There are too few people who can stand in this direction. Seize the opportunity and you can break away from the label of big factory.






Do you really want to be a product manager forever?






I believe that many people in China are more or less interested in Steve Jobs, Luo Yonghao and changing the world when choosing a career as a product manager.




But are you really the right person to be?


This whole public account thing, plus 2020. I wrote for a total of five years, during which TIME I worked as a product manager




I work as a product manager and I spend my spare time as a product manager.


In the five years since I wrote product manager, my personal brand has gradually improved. At the same time, THE PMTalk product manager community that my friends and I founded has gradually become the most active product manager gathering place in China.


Still, many readers who grew up with me left comments advising me not to write about product managers.
“What’s the point of being in this business for 10 years and getting a million users? The circle is so small.”


I even went to the CEO of an industry company and was directly advised to change track and give up everything.




It’s true that product management is a difficult profession.


The actual results of the user population, write product manager’s public account we-media author. There are only a few tens of thousands




If you get 20,000, or even 100,000, you’ve either been writing for 10 years, or you’ve put money into it, or you’ve got other resources behind it.


Compared with emotion, food, insurance and real estate, we-media KOL in the product manager industry may not even be able to receive advertisements, and Party A’s father has never seen any of them.


Even the “so-called product manager size” with 20,000 followers is actually less than 2,000 yuan a headline when the AD is accepted.


At the same time, such advertising push to consider the feelings of readers, but also can not be pushed every day on 1-2 times a month.


So you can see that if you want to be a product manager we media annual salary million, I can directly tell you the answer: impossible.



But why am I still doing content generation on this track?


Answer: beginner’s mind


It is the same as the name of the official account: Kevin changes the world. Each of us is born in a combination of time points, lines and planes.


Product manager although the track is difficult, and even some friends almost make no money to expand into operation, design, entrepreneurial projects, for the purpose is very simple to increase user coverage in exchange for more traffic




Gradually the original intention has become biased.




This thing is like the bottom line of life, at least you want to do the worst. As for whether we can do better, it depends on the opportunity.




So you are stepping into the Internet company, the original mind has not changed to see her career development, industry track changes can be seen.


At the age of 30, why should we be indomitable?


At this age, both boys and girls will face three practical problems


1. Parents are old and most of them have retired. It is inevitable that there will be various physical conditions, need to spend time on the health of parents




2. What these people need is a better learning atmosphere and living standard for their children when they enter school


3. Rapid career development or bottleneck


The turnover rate is highest among new graduates. After 30, the rate of job turnover will decrease.




For the first and second reasons mentioned above, income is key.


Whether it’s starting a business or keeping your original intention, if you can’t keep the basic requirements of parents and children, how can you talk about your original intention? To continue to maintain the original aspiration can only be said to be irresponsible and moral loss.


At the age of 30, the career development of Internet people is basically determined. For example, students who are product managers have become product director and VP of the company, while those who are doctors have entered regular hospital work and those who are teachers have entered school work through hard study. At the age of 30, everyone’s professional attributes are basically determined


So here’s a hot quote you can look back on at age 30:


Did we change the world, or did the world change me?


It doesn’t really matter if the product manager can change the time. What matters is satisfaction in life, like buying a car, changing a car, buying a house


Those who have had one house are thinking of a second; The BMW driver is wondering when to change his Porsche


From product manager to life, embrace change


With the point of life, line composition, and then line composition of the surface. In the end, you will find that your life was worth living.