Everyone wants to enter big factory, on the one hand, big factory can give people the opportunity to get more exercise, on the other hand, big factory, the future is bright.

Ideal and reality

Dachang people have their own aura, when they walk out of the dachang, is the aura still there? Let me tell you a quick story:

With the dream of changing the world, Zhang ended his work in a foreign company for more than ten years and started his own entrepreneurial journey with several old colleagues. The first few people were very motivated and the project made good progress, so Lao Zhang decided to expand the team size.

However, to Zhang’s surprise, he was turned down when a candidate finally passed the interview they conducted according to foreign recruitment standards. After all, in the days of foreign companies, the candidates who made it through the interview were happy to come, and many of them even took a pay cut to join the company.

What Lao Zhang couldn’t figure out was, isn’t the purpose of joining a company to work with a group of people? Our group of people are from that foreign company, the recruitment process is the same as that foreign company, and even the words used in recruitment are exactly the same. The candidates are also very recognized by the foreign company I used to work in, but how come they turned us down in the end?

In the talent market, people from big factories are in high demand. If there is a chance to grab them, then what? Let me tell you a little story:

Wang’s startup survived its initial phase, and the business continued to grow, along with the size of his team. In order to let himself focus more on the company’s business development, Lao Wang decided to find a CTO to improve the technical team. This CTO must have a pattern, having seen the world, Lao Wang decided to find a person from the big factory to serve as this CTO.

Lao Wang launched his own channels, and finally ushered in a CTO from a large factory. This CTO has not only a large factory experience, but also done a lot of important projects. Lao Wang thinks that the company will soon take off.

However, the good times did not last long, the contradiction between the new CTO and the technical team slowly appeared, the lawsuit hit Lao Wang here. The technical team believes that CTO does not understand the actual situation and makes irresponsible commands day by day. CTO believes that the team is not capable. No matter the system transformation or process improvement, many of his ideas cannot be implemented, and many of his excellent practices in Dachang cannot be implemented here.

Both sides said quite reasonable, Lao Wang heart was confused, CTO people are big factory exercise, ideas should be no problem, how to za this can not do, this problem is in the end where?

The fundamental reason for Lao Zhang’s and Lao Wang’s problems is that they have not figured out a key point. Dachang people have their own aura, but where does this aura come from?

Who does the aura belong to?

When Lao Zhang was in a foreign company, he was able to attract excellent people, and even people could accept a salary cut. A key point is the endorsement of the foreign brand. Although Lao Zhang has worked in this foreign company for more than ten years, the advantage of foreign brand is not on him. So, when he came out to start his own business, everything went to zero. As an ordinary job seeker, people can trust a foreign company that has existed in the industry for many years, but why trust you this person. When he worked in a foreign company, what Lao Zhang possessed was actually the platform capability of the foreign company, which Lao Zhang mistook for his own personal capability.

Also, Lao wang to find the big CTO, he really has made outstanding achievements in the former work, but the problem is, when the giant, the team is big brand endorsement what he has built up an excellent team, that is one of the outstanding talented person, moreover, the system building of the metal itself relatively is also very perfect, the development process has also been very specification, These are all advantages that a typical startup cannot have. The CTO was doing things the way he was used to doing things, demanding that a grassroots entrepreneurial team live up to the requirements of a big corporate team was like scratching a boat to find a sword. What Lao Wang and the CTO failed to understand is that part of the abilities that the CTO had before were provided by Dachang’s own platform, rather than his own personal abilities.

Misinterpreting platform capabilities as personal capabilities is at the root of the problem.

There are many reasons why a person achieves great success in a big company:

  • Maybe it’s because a guy like Anders Hejlsberg, who made Turbo Pascal and Delphi at Borland, C# and Typescript at Microsoft, is a top achievement

  • It may be the mutual achievements of both sides. For example, Zhang Xiaolong led the team to create wechat, which gave Tencent a ticket to the era of mobile Internet, enabling Tencent to continue to expand its territory

  • It could be the ability of the platform itself, where an R&D team develops a product with hundreds of millions of users, maybe because another product helps it to flow, a sales person gets orders, maybe because the platform brand endorses it

People like to believe in heroes, so internally and externally, they tend to attribute the success of a project to people, but the truth is that a large part of the success is platform. A person who has achieved success in a large company can only show that he is able to take advantage of the opportunities offered by the platform.

Who is the ability to

Once we know where the halo comes from, we don’t need to be superstitious about dachang’s halo. Dachang is like a famous university, which only shows that the probability of excellent talents is relatively high, but doesn’t mean that people from Dachang really have the corresponding ability. When we choose to cooperate with someone from dACHang, we need to distinguish clearly whether we really need this person’s ability or his ability to combine with the platform.

You may say, I am not the head of a company, knowing where the halo of big factory comes from, what is the use to me?

As individuals, we all want to do well for ourselves, but the question is what exactly we should be accumulating. Obviously, you can’t take away the capabilities of the platform, only the capabilities of the individual are yours. With this in mind, we should be clear about whether we are building up our capabilities on the platform or as individuals.

Some people say, what is education? Education is what remains after you have forgotten everything you learned in school. What is personal ability? Leaving a platform, what remains is a person’s ability, such as:

  • I can write Java code very well, even if I change companies, I can write Java code, that’s my ability

  • A variety of frameworks within a company, without the company, no other company in the industry will use, that is the power of the platform

  • After leaving this company, will I still be able to assemble such a team? If so, the ability to form a team is mine, if not, the platform’s

  • What does a software development process look like? Whether I’m doing what the company wants me to do, or whether I really know what I’m doing, it’s a different skill set

For everyone, working hard for the company is a duty, but self-improvement is also a desire for personal growth. An important reason to figure out where our accumulated capabilities are built is that we can’t assume the platform is always solid.

For modern people, especially those who work in big cities, the scene of working in one company for a lifetime is becoming less and less. On the one hand, a person may have different demands at different growth stages, which may not be satisfied by a company. When the development of both parties does not match, leaving is an inevitable choice. On the other hand, whether the company can exist for a long time and provide us with a stable platform is a question that needs to be questioned.

As someone who grew up in an old industrial base, I grew up in an environment where stability was always desired. However, in the course of growing up, I saw that stability collapse, and a stable job of decades suddenly disappeared. A few years ago, there was a video of a 30-something highway toll collector who was about to be laid off, crying that he was good at nothing but collecting fees. As far as I’m concerned, it’s just a replay of what happened years ago.

Everyone is eager to succeed, and having a good platform is the step towards greater success. Make good use of platform ability, accumulate personal ability, go on step by step firmly, after all, there is still a long way to go.