In the blink of an eye, I have been engaged in the front-end industry for more than three years and joined the company for more than two years. I have personally experienced the development of the front-end team of the company from one or two people at the beginning to nearly 20 people now. In the process of the rapid growth of the team, I experienced a lot of confusion, but also took a lot of wrong road. Take advantage of the end of the review, write a summary of their past growth and perception for later review, also hope to help you on the way of growth.

I. Scattered soldiers and brave soldiers

My current company was established in August 2018. I passed the interview in October and joined the company in the middle of November. In the early days of the establishment of the company, there were only three people in the front end team, including me. Most of them had one or two years of experience in the front end industry, and their technical level was uneven. Looking at the front-end team at that time from the present dimension, the level of the whole team was basically around P4+ or P5. Under such a team configuration, I started my entrepreneurial journey.

At the early stage of the company’s establishment, the products were in the stage of rapid polishing and trial and error. The feedback of the team at that time was that time was tight, the task was heavy, and overtime was serious. Everyone was dispersed to different business lines, and there was little communication with each other, and there was a lack of technical atmosphere. When a company’s product is blocked in the process of getting to market, the psychological impact on the team is huge, because no one knows if the startup will survive the market competition and few people are willing to bet their careers on the company, so there is a lot of turnover at this time.

After staying in this company for two or three months, I often have the idea of leaving. I feel that there is a big gap between ideal and reality, but I still insist on it. The only thing that kept me going was my obsession with seeing a company go from zero to one and then grow very fast. This obsession affected me so much that it later affected my entire career planning. The reason why I have this obsession is mainly derived from the feeling of weakness of a screw when I first entered the workplace. When I just graduated, I worked for Huawei, engaged in the design and development of a certain chip. During the research and development process, I found that the whole project would be dismantled very finely. If you want to build a car, you are only responsible for one part of the valve in the tire of the car, although you know that you are building a car, but you have little idea how the whole system of the car is put together. Also based on this reason, there was the initial obsession.

Therefore, whenever I have the idea of leaving, I will ask myself whether I still remember why I chose to join this company.

Two, wild growth

As the business entered a phase of small-scale expansion, the front end team grew from three people to about six, and management issues followed. Due to my lack of management experience, MANY things are taken for granted. I often push some things, but find the effect is not satisfactory. When you make a lot of mistakes pushing things, you’re not immune to criticism from all sides, both from management and from team members. This was a great blow to me as I was first exposed to management, and I always felt thankless in my heart. After all, the management did not delegate the power to do management. Often feel less than more than one thing, do not make mistakes, more do more wrong, so began to ignore. In such a state, each team member entered the savage growth stage with the development of the company’s business.

Secondly, the track the company chooses is To B direction, which often needs To solve different scenarios of different customers, and has higher and higher requirements on the ability of the whole front-end team. At this time, we will find that the initial team configuration is somewhat difficult, and students who join in the early stage gradually cannot keep up with the pace of the team, sometimes even affecting the promotion of the project.

As a result of the combination of the above factors, the whole front end team entered a period of continuous turmoil, some quit, some stayed to grow rapidly, some new blood came in and quickly supported a business line of the company. In such a process of savage growth and continuous replacement, team configuration gradually evolved from the initial P4+ and P5 to more P5+ and less P6.

Three, every drop of sand makes a tower

The following is a brief talk about how individuals start from small things, gradually get rid of the individual and the team from the previous state, and form a positive cycle of common development between individuals and the team.

3.1 Personal Level

3.1.1 Looking for a guide

On the road of growth, we often encounter all kinds of puzzles, some of which can be solved by long-term exploration, and some of which cannot be broken through based on existing cognition. Sometimes we need someone at a higher cognitive level to help us navigate these unsolvable puzzles.

I am glad that I added Scott’s wechat in the second half of last year and joined Scott’s early chat. During the chat with Scott, I prepared a lot of questions, and he was tired of answering them for me, which helped me to solve many puzzles and avoid many wrong paths. Later, I joined the front-end TL group organized by Scott by chance. In the group, front-end TL from all walks of life across the country would throw their management problems into the group every day, and many front-end TL would express their opinions. In the process of participation, my cognition began to be gradually opened, and I gradually realized how far I was from the top players in the industry. In the past year, I learned a lot of knowledge in the group and got to know a lot of people.

3.1.2 Change yourself

Reinventing values

In the past, I acted more by instinct, and seldom combed my core values from the bottom of my heart, that is, what kind of person do I want to be when I am divorced from social and family responsibilities? I thought about it for a long time, and I decided that I wanted to be altruistic in addition to fulfilling my own responsibilities. After completing the construction of altruistic values, it is found that values will affect your behavior, and then affect others to influence the team.

Out of altruism, you offer to help interns make the transition from student to professional faster, rather than ignoring it. Out of altruism, you remind your team members when they are going astray, rather than picking on them. Out of altruism, when a team member is thinking of leaving, you will help him analyze the pros and cons of the Offer from the perspective of someone who has experienced it, and encourage him to try it if it is a good opportunity. Altruism is actually self-interest to some extent, and then achieve win-win for each other.

Change the state of mind

For a long time when I just joined the company, I would have some negative emotions, such as making fun of the company’s rules and regulations, being dissatisfied with the current development of the company, or being disappointed with the team. I felt a big gap from my ideal.

But then you realize that there are thousands of front-end teams out there. Your ideal front-end team is probably not more than a hundred, and the chance that you want to join one of them is probably less than one in a hundred, which is a very small chance. Instead of jumping from one front end to the next to find your ideal front end team, why not try to turn your existing front end team into your ideal front end team?

Remember Scott once said that good people should have the ability to keep getting results. If you can’t get the results you want at a small or medium company, you can’t drive downstream to get the results you want at a large company.

To solve the problem

I realized early on that although I was engaged in front-end development, I should not limit my technical vision to the front-end, and should try to position myself as an engineer. I should try to solve any non-technical problems that involve the front end as far as I can. However, whenever THERE was a team problem or a project problem, I felt that it was beyond my responsibility and I couldn’t help.

Later, I realized that this level of cognition was too narrow, and it was not enough to solve technical problems. Solving technical problems only stays at the most basic level, and only when the difficulty of solving problems becomes more difficult will it bring you to a higher level of awareness, such as team problems, business problems, industry problems. Once the mind and cognition are limited, that person’s development is really limited.

A PM once told me to enjoy the process of doing projects. Just began to hear this sentence feel PM belongs to stand talking waist pain. Sometimes projects are too painful to enjoy. Frequent business trips to customers’ sites not only limit the office environment, but also push them to solve various non-technical problems when party A does not cooperate. Later, I realized that I had this problem because I positioned myself as a front-end engineer. In the process of participating in the project, we could observe how the project PM prevented the project from getting out of control and made plans and implemented them step by step. In the implementation of the project, if there is a lack of job responsibilities, I should try to fill the position, so as to exercise my PM ability to some extent. When this cognitive shift is complete, you begin to see projects not as a pain, but as an opportunity to exercise.

3.2 Team Level

After completing the above changes in self-perception, I will talk about how I gradually stabilized a constantly turbulent front end team and rapidly grew into a front end team of more than ten people.

3.2.1 Embrace people

Establish technical leadership

In the early days, team members were scattered across the company’s lines of business, working on their own and communicating very little with each other. Since the company advocates flat management, in fact, this means that the whole team is lack of backbone, at this time, one or two members of the team should take the initiative to change the atmosphere of the whole team. Fortunately, there is a technical backbone with the same idea in the team. Under the leadership of us, we began to take the initiative to share technology within the team. By sharing technology, we not only imperceptibly established personal technical leadership, but also changed the technical atmosphere of the whole team, indirectly playing a role of winning people’s hearts.

Create a culture of transparency and openness

As time goes on, an organization is bound to become lax, bureaucratic, and even prone to extinction. In my opinion, the best way to fight against the increase in organizational entropy and avoid the team from going into chaos is to create a transparent and open culture, establish more information feedback channels and make timely corrections, so as to effectively resist the increase in organizational entropy. In terms of how to build a transparent development culture, I did the following things within the team last year:

  • Regular group dinner to increase the familiarity of employees;
  • Establish information feedback channels, regularly collect group members’ demands and feedback on problems in weekly meetings;
  • Establish a communication mechanism with team members, and conduct one-to-one communication with team members from time to time. For interns, we will maintain frequent communication at the beginning of the internship to help them better complete the transition from students to professionals.
  • Hold ridicule meetings for group members from time to time, and talk about what we appreciate about ourselves in each other’s eyes, and what we need to improve, so as to have a new understanding of ourselves from the perspective of others.

3.2.2 Establishment of the system

Once the technical atmosphere and culture of the early team was established, individuals began to do things that could be institutionalized, such as organizing regular weekly front-end meetings. In the front-end weekly meeting, I will collect the personal demands of team members and analyze which demands can be solved from my personal level and which cannot be solved. For the unsolvable demands, sometimes the company will use various channels to report them back.

Establish a standardized system after, of course, the most to or perform, people always have a inert, in order to avoid the same due to long time to drive one thing the passion of sleepy, and ultimately lead to things implementation, usually to divide the responsibility, by the team everyone took turns to initiate, thus effectively avoid the abortion in the process of system implementation. There are many similar things like this, including technology sharing, team Code Review and so on, we have adopted similar forms.

3.2.3 Precipitation of infrastructure

I remember the former head of the management cloud tang once said in the management group, “Frequent job changes are not the first to destroy the professional reputation, but the opportunity to precipitation. I would laugh at the idea of one jump a year and good precipitation and growth. At first, I was not convinced when I saw him say this, but after so many things, I recognized it more and more. You may need to be in a company for two or three years before you really know what a company is. Similarly, for the company’s UI design, products, business, without more than one year of contact, it is difficult to win enough trust from upstream and downstream, naturally, it is difficult to push upstream and downstream to implement your idea well.

In the past two years, in the process of making different products of the company, I gradually found some similarities between products and business, so I began to try to do some front-end infrastructure work. Last year, we mainly did the following things in front-end infrastructure:

  • Sedimentation of various document specifications within the group, such as orientation to newcomers, Git specifications, project process specifications, redisk documents and Code Review summary, etc.
  • In the team to promote the completion of the background component library site, which includes UI specification components, UI basic components, UI business components and commonly used chart components. Later, on the basis of components, I also promoted the construction of the site of the front-end material block.

At first, limited by their own hands-on, front-end infrastructure overall promotion at a very slow stage. Later, I was lucky enough to realize this point, and gradually let colleagues with good ability to charge in the infrastructure, and found that the final effect was not bad, and also supported more technical space for these students.

Iv. Looking ahead to 2021

4.1 Personal Level

We will strengthen technical weaknesses

With the rapid development of the company’s business, the technical scenes that need to be solved become more and more complex. At this time, I feel that my knowledge is shallow. Many technical solutions have not been contacted before, how to give excellent solutions? In view of this shortcoming, I will spend a lot of time next year to read the technical source code of open source projects, and then have a thorough understanding of them and share them to form an effective knowledge loop.

Sorting out values

For their underlying core values have not been fully sorted out, has been a lack of dialogue with their own inner opportunities. This year, I will take some time to do some sorting. I hope to finish building the underlying values as early as possible and avoid acting on instinct for a long time.

A closed-loop thinking

I remember that at the beginning of 2020, I set a Flag for myself and broke the game.

Looking back on the way we have gone in the past year, I feel ok and have not gone awry. Both myself and my team have made some breakthroughs from the previous difficulties. In the New Year, give yourself another Flag, closed loop. I hope I can gradually form a closed loop in working methodology and knowledge and technology system, and continue to improve and optimize.

Time control

In the middle of September last year, I received a little daughter. After having a little daughter, I found that the time I could spend on study was almost better than nothing. Every day a little spare time was devoted to babbling with her. So in the New Year, explore how to balance work and family.

In the New Year, I will go out more, meet more people, broaden my horizons, and avoid being in a corner.

4.2 Team Level

When use
  • Try to establish the personal ability matrix of team members, help them to dig their own strengths, and break through their own shortcomings;
  • Learn to delegate better, and consciously start exercising from the small things around you;
Build echelon

At present, some business lines of the company often need to be in charge, which shows that there are still many problems in the current talent echelon construction. In the New Year, I will do the following things in team echelon construction:

  • Recruit more excellent children to join the team, at least in some aspects of their own stronger;
  • Maintain the reasonable flow of the team and replenish fresh blood;
  • Let competent children stand out and take on more challenging tasks;
The front-end infrastructure

In terms of front-end infrastructure, this year will focus on the five stages of development preparation, coding joint adjustment, debugging and optimization, construction and deployment, and online release to settle all aspects, and form a small closed loop of front-end R&D process as soon as possible. At the same time, fine-grained optimization and further implementation within the team will be carried out for existing documentation specifications and component precipitation.

Unite the majority

At present, some front-end colleagues of the company are scattered in other cities. How to involve these colleagues in the front-end infrastructure and establish a wider range of overall linkage of the front-end team to further improve the overall human efficiency of the team is also the direction to be considered this year.

Five, the end

During more than two years in this company, I have made a lot of changes, and completed my transformation from a front-end newcomer who has been engaged in the front-end industry for less than one year to a front-end supervisor. I hope the superficial experience mentioned above can enlighten most of the children’s shoes who are in the same small and medium-sized front-end team. I also want to thank my team mates, supervisors and bosses. Without you, THERE would be no change in my body.