Hangzhou, Xixi, winter, misty rain hazy, another year ali D2. Same venue, same people, but different feeling.

This session of D2 is the theme of the “originality”, the author is most touches the word “China”, the author focused on D2 this year new theme “front-end technology management”, pay attention to the team and personal “technical training” problem, therefore, in combination with some key words, give up this article a more literary topic “fine China technical accomplishment”.

Different from the past, due to the change of identity in the team, this time in D2, I pay more attention to the direction of the industry than to the front-end technical details. Therefore, “technical management” and “overall design of technical solutions” are the focus of the author this time.

Section 1 — Growth

After several years of development, the technology maturity and stability of the front end have reached a very high level. Although various wheels emerge endlessly, the technical system and architecture have tended to be stable. At this time, how to manage the technology stack used by the team is neither “complacent” nor “aggressive”. It is a problem that front-end team and terminal team managers need to focus on. This year, D2 also introduced the theme of front-end management, with several experienced front-end team leaders sharing their experiences.

Among them, what impressed me most was “Self-growth Diversified Team” brought by moon Shadow. The author has spent a lot of energy to pay attention to the growth of team members, but has not achieved much. Most of the problems encountered were mentioned in the sharing of Moon Shadow, so I have a lot of feelings. Among them, “diversification” and “closed loop” are the two points that the author thinks are the most core.

In a team, there are members with different styles, personalities and abilities. How to make each member reflect their due value has always been a thorny problem encountered by the team Leader. In particular, in my team YMFE, which is in charge of the company’s large front-end infrastructure and mid-taiwan solutions, the values and capabilities of each member are sometimes quite different. In addition, the team will recruit some fresh graduates without any business experience every year, how to let the fresh graduates show their outstanding value, so that the team thinks they are worth cultivating, and tilt resources, is also a very annoying thing.

Here, Moon Shadow put forward a point of view — “pay more attention to organization and less attention to management”. It is better to plan a series of “avenues” for each individual and let members choose by themselves. Of course, a series of “avenues” here must meet two conditions, namely the “diversification” and “closed loop” mentioned above (the picture below is the diversified and multi-dimensional growth space of Qi Dance Troupe). The current team has similar avenues, but not enough dimensions; In addition, when the team grows to a certain size, the low-dimensional growth space may restrict the action power of team members. Therefore, it is necessary to establish different growth space and growth path according to the company and the team itself. Maybe this will be the main thing promoted by the author in the team in 2018.

Rather than “diversity”, I feel that “closed-loop” is more important, and both “positive” and “negative” feedback are necessary. In a purely technical team, the skills of the members must be in the first place. Besides technology, project management, new mentors, external technology output and sharing are all very important. Among these, especially “external technology output and sharing” is the most difficult to form a closed loop, the most difficult to give enough feedback to the engaged. Some people say that it is very simple to form a closed loop, directly linked to performance and promotion. Of course, it’s just one way to do it, but it can only give people stress, such as “negative feedback” on unfinished work, and it doesn’t lead to more “positive feedback”.

In fact, the best way to give back is to increase the influence of the team and make team members have team pride. Although there were Conf meetings and open source projects this year, I don’t think I received as much “positive feedback” as I expected, especially from junior and new members. This is not only to work on the form, but also to strengthen the team consciousness of everyone in the team, which should be the focus of the next year to improve.

Section two — Be pragmatic

In the sharing of moon shadow, the issue of “active” and “conservative” managers is also deeply thought-provoking.

Both active managers and conservative managers value excellent talents and efficient organization, because only excellent talents combined with efficient and stable organization can form an excellent team. About this, most people know, and have a certain understanding. Therefore, the author here will not do redundant, but talk about the first three points of view and thinking.

First of all, for the derogatory word “conservative”, the author thinks “pragmatic” is more appropriate. To put it bluntly, the salary is paid by the company and creating value for the company is the top priority. Applying technology to business and products and reducing business risks may be what the company management prefers. For example, if you write an unrivaled framework that no one has ever written before or since, if it’s not adopted by the business, you’ll end up producing only a few thousand lines of code.

Here, readers might think I’m a “conservative” manager, but I’m not. The author is a big white sheep, and innovation is an indelible desire to proceed straight ahead, but the author is more inclined to “positive” on the basis of “conservative”, “innovation” on the shoulder of “pragmatic”. Innovation is about the future, but whether your innovation is effective for the future is not an empty promise. Therefore, the so-called innovation should be refined in a pragmatic scenario to refine the innovation needed in the future. There is a very simple logic. In the process of practical business, we found the pain point of business, which needs a new way to solve, so we need to innovate. This ensures that your innovation, regardless of the outcome, has a meaningful starting point and can be recognized by everyone. React Native, for example, not only solves the urgent need for hot update of businesses, but also improves the experience and makes a better experience effect than Web, so it is favored by people. However, React Native has some disadvantages. For example, the efficiency of List is low due to communication bottleneck. For example, the components implemented by Native cannot be hot-updated (at least not for iOS). Is to do micro innovation, directly cut into the pain point, solve the problem; It is better to innovate and propose a better architectural form than React Native, which is what managers should consider deeply.

Section 3 — Middle stage

In the above statement, I mentioned the term “Mid-stage” and referred to some of the team’s work as “Mid-stage solutions.” In fact, I only noticed the word “zhongtai” on D2, because many of the posts mentioned the concept of “Zhongtai”, perhaps because most of the posts are related to Ali. “Big middle platform, small front Desk” is the company-level strategy put forward by Alibaba at the end of 2015. Many companies have followed suit and turned the former “public support team” into the current “platform division”. The profound significance of the company’s strategy is beyond the understanding of the author as a small technical staff. However, as far as technology is concerned, such strategy will reduce the probability of multiple teams doing one thing. Meanwhile, students who want to do technology can always do technology without thinking about “management after 30 years, manager after 40 years”. This may be a good news for students who simply like to do technology. (The figure below is the overall organizational structure of Alibaba group based on the strategy of “big middle stage and small front Stage” in early 2016)

What is the middle platform? Provide the front desk with tools, services, modules and other common and unified resources. For big front-end technologies, build tools, development platforms, service platforms, common components all fall into the mid-stage category. When the large front-end infrastructure tends to be stable (front-end React, Angular, Vue three points, client Native, Hybrid, React Native (including RN) three points), not only based on the existing architecture, adapt to the company’s basic research and development, but also provide technical solution support for business. Getting the business side to iterate faster is probably the focus of today’s big front ends.

Of course, the only “Taiwan” theory, sometimes more “terrible”. It would be terrible if the front desk technician only cared about the business, and the middle desk technician couldn’t provide the technical needs of the front desk, because it was hard to fill the gap in the middle, or the issue became a tug of war. As a result, engineers in the “middle” section are under more pressure and have deeper skills.

Section 4 — Cultivation

In the environment of “big middle stage, small front stage”, what kind of technical accomplishment should big front end engineer have? Just stick three powerpoint slides of Matcenan on the box.

“Looking at history” is always a good way to analyze. By reviewing the development process of the front end, the technology of each stage is to solve the problems and pain points of this stage. Although the picture is mostly of the front end, the client side is similar. Therefore, it can be said that the big front end has solved problems from content bearing to experience optimization, from side interaction to engineering, even including development mode and other aspects, and the ability to solve these problems is the basic requirement of the current big front end engineers.

And now? In the future? The author talks about his idea. In the era of continuous expansion of business forms and bigger “China platform”, big front-end engineers, especially those who do architecture, need to be able to withstand loneliness more. Unlike in previous years, a good architectural solution can turn things upside down; Now, and in the future, it is more about providing services to the business, and stability and perfection are key. Or, you might not feel the gain, but the actual value of what you’re doing might be higher because it will support more business than it does now.

Finally, post a PPT of “core competencies” — not only to be exported after disassembly, but also to be implemented in the business.

Section 5 — even better

As a big front-end architecture with obvious characteristics in Taiwan, what should we do? Better ecology and better services, perhaps.

The simple truth is that when a person is full, he or she needs to eat well, conveniently and nutritionally. The same goes for architecture. When the architecture meets the business needs, the business will turn around and demand that the architecture be more stable and easier to use.

Above is alipay Gary shared a PPT, similar Q also includes many, “why is the code still the original”, “why did not click the response”, “iOS is not wrong, Android died”. This kind of feedback from various business people can be annoying and tricky; You can’t expect business people to solve their own, and some problems, business people simply can’t solve. At this point, you need a sophisticated tool, service, or something else to quickly locate the problem, or to prove that “the problem is not a framework, it’s a business.” Therefore, in the coming year or years, a better ecosystem and better service should be a primary concern for the mid-stage and for the big front-end architecture teams.

conclusion

2017 is still a hot year for the big front-end, but the development has changed from “savage growth” to “ingenuity”, and more and more stable and mature architecture methods have been widely used. Meanwhile, the buzz has shifted to machine learning and cryptocurrencies, and the big front end of UI is where it’s going. Perhaps history has given the answer, the traditional back end quietly for a long time to do modularization, service, with the rise of cloud, ushered in a new spring. Perhaps, the “Centralization” of big front end is the next most important step in its development.

2018, the New Year, hello.

For more videos and slides from D2, visit d2forum.alibaba-inc.com/