This article is reprinted from wechat official account: Arhat Eating Grass. And the “I” in this isn’t Hollis. And in return it’s author Wang Ye.
Those who are familiar with me know that I have a wife who is engaged in headhunting. Her usual work is to provide middle and senior positions recruitment and related consulting services for some medical and financial investment institutions.
This job, by contrast, requires professional expertise and networking, often prompting industry MOBS to ask, “What do you think of this company? What do you think is the difference between x and x?”
An unprofessional or disrespectful response will not only embarrass you, but also erode your trust.
In headhunting, the loss of trust means the loss of certainty and, in the long run, the business.
Last week, my wife had a candidate who was stuck on the final stage after passing the first and second tests.
The demise of such a high-end VP position clearly upset her.
I tried to comfort her, but got a stern look and said, “Don’t talk to me about that! Cooked ducks are flying, hundreds of thousands of commissions ah, so fly!”
As I shivered, I felt the anger rising through the sky, and quickly changed my words. “It’s okay to win or lose.”
“To hell with your army! I’m really angry, don’t mess with me!”
I understood that business was so tough, and it weighed on her emotionally, and she smiled and said, “OKAY. So why was it rejected?”
“These days, customers are really hard to handle. They hire VPS and ask detailed questions. In the end, the candidate complains that the company undervalues him, and the company jokes that the guy is incompetent.”
She asked me, looking up from her tea.
“Seems like in your tech community, this kind of thing happens a lot?”
Such a topic, once in the technology circle also debated for a while.
I tried to explain it to him with a few examples, not to mention that I’m good at this.
For example, when the team size exceeds dozens of people and there is more than one product line, a technical director is needed to manage and coordinate leaders of each product line, and be responsible for building a common technology platform, improving development efficiency, controlling quality and reducing costs.
For example, it is necessary to set up a CTO only when the team size exceeds hundreds. After all, at this level of r&d scale, a special team is required to conduct innovation exploration of technology application and pre-research of cutting-edge technology, and it should form a good interaction with the technology platform team and application R&D team. Let the innovation prototype pilot can be smoothly integrated into the commercial platform and then let the application R & D line large-scale use……
At this point, my wife waved me to stop.
“How many times have you rehearsed your speech? Don’t try to fool me with speech-making. The ‘catch me by the beard and eyebrows’ theory doesn’t make sense.” “She continued,” I also talk to recruiters in the technology field, so I’ll give you my spin while you take a break.”
Should middle/senior management care about details?
Either the director or the lead should include a timeline of the development of the business.
In the period of rapid development of the company, generally not because of idle egg pain, recruit a CTO to play, or pinch a count, feel the sky appeared auspicious, boding the company will be in half a year later business scale over a few, we recruit a CTO for a rainy day.
When you plan to recruit people, you usually encounter a problem that you can’t understand. The existing partner lacks experience and can’t handle it. Well, use your network of contacts and headhunters to find a targeted buddy to fill the hole.
As for Title, VP or director, as long as the old staff can level the playing field, as long as the candidates want, they can generally be satisfied.
Well, here’s the problem. If the guy who’s filling the hole knows how to draw pie, but has no real experience, he’s going to fall into two big dilemmas.
One is how to accept the crowd, the other is how to achieve.
It is often said that technical men refuse to obey management and only obey the gods, so the solutions to these two dilemmas are the same.
I hastened to reply that this is true.
Speaking of this, I remembered a technical VP I met with last year. Seeing that he had experience in “snatching tickets and killing scenes” on his resume, I asked him to introduce the whole architecture and scene implementation in detail.
He spent ten minutes drawing a topology on the blackboard and explaining their options for caching, fusing, downgrading and limiting traffic.
I think it’s nice that he was there for the whole thing.
So I asked him, “Can you tell me more about the distributed caching implementation?” He hemmed and hazed for a long time, barely able to give a general idea, especially about issues like heat transfer and consistent hashing.
Then I asked him, “Can you tell me more about how you limit the flow?” He perked up and explained the Nginx profitlimit approach, and I asked, “Isn’t that bad for business? If you had to do it all over again, what would you do differently?”
He replied, “Asynchronous implementation.”
“How asynchronously?” I asked. Can you elaborate?”
He paused for a few seconds and replied with a little impatience: “Sorry, these are all done by the architect. I am here to interview the TECHNICAL VP. Why do you always ask me the technical details?”
I had the good sense to ease the embarrassment and immediately switched to management.
The wife said, “Look, this company is growing fast. You are hired to solve problems.”
If you had the general idea, why would I ask you?
The wife continued, there is a saying in our investment field, I don’t know if you have it.
I said, what is it?
If you’re looking for a director, or a VP, go after the number two technical person on your team.
Why is that? Compared with the director, the salary of the second-in-command will be slightly lower, and the new Title is more attractive to him. Moreover, he generally has a deeper understanding of details, which is more conducive to implementation
I took a sip of tea and nodded. That makes sense.
What about companies in plateaus or recessions, I immediately ask? Would it have made any difference?
“Why do we need directors and VP when we are in a plateau or recession?” “My wife asked.
“Why not? The team is still there. You need someone to manage it.” I’m not convinced.
“Forget it, technical positions like yours are equivalent to tools. Once the business enters a plateau or recession, the hot spots of the cost center will be highlighted, and each position will be watched by a Leader to maintain normal business operation. Is there any planning and platform left to do at this point? Is it gone?”
My wife patted me on the shoulder and sneered, “Ctos and ctos are waiting to be picked up these days. I told you, these are high-risk occupations.”
I gulped and asked: “Is that true of investments?”
My wife turned to look at me and said, “This is the basic rule of the game. Why are you so surprised after so many years?”
I sighed, there is a sharp perspective of the wife, do not know this is a blessing, or a curse.
What happens if you don’t care about technical details?
As I have mentioned in many speeches and articles, the promotion paths of many technical managers in China are often related to leadership relationships, timing coincidences, and the ability to speak.
Whether the position is high or not only reflects the enterprise’s trust in him, rather than his strong or weak technical ability.
What’s more, the criteria for judging whether someone has achieved promotion vary from company to company, from time to time, from industry to industry, and from boss to boss.
Tell the truth and, to avoid offending anyone, call the protagonist “Xiao Li”.
One year, Xiao Li has been working in A company after graduation. By the end of the year, he will be three years old. Because he is eloquent and has strong business understanding ability, he is appreciated by the boss.
The New Year just passed, Xiao Li’s department director quit, the department are all new employees in two years, the boss promoted Xiao Li to the department director position.
At the moment, business is growing fast and the company urgently needs to build a common technology platform to help improve development efficiency.
Three years is either too long or too short. Besides, most of the work is related to business communication and logic research and development, but Xiao Li has no experience in this aspect. To solve this problem, the company recruited two experienced architects to help Li build the platform together.
A year later, the platform gradually took shape and basically met the company’s business development requirements. In this year, Xiao Li has made great progress in both system planning and product design.
As the saying goes, the environment creates talent, really true.
After is computer professional background, and engaged in a line of development time is shorter, the selection of the technology and practice on the key points of the control, xiao li will float to the surface, usually like to talk, to show off qualifications, encounter problems always give problems to the architect, also always put the “management and technology to separate”, “top-level design is the key point in this theory.
This kind of argument is not only easy to attract the dislike of technical partners, but also makes the mentality more impetuous.
Two years later, the company began slashing its technical team as it restructured its business. Xiao Li was also affected and began to look for jobs, only to be turned off everywhere.
All the companies he interviewed with had almost identical comments about him:
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Application scenarios are experienced, but they are superficial.
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Poor technical foundation, out of the line for a long time.
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Technical stack understanding degree is shallow, vague to principle.
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High salary requirements, too impetuous mentality.
It’s a shame to get such a review. What other company would dare to hire you?
I remember chatting with my friends about these words:
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Technical practice scenario landing is very important. Where’s all that planning? Where’s all that top level design to do?
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The technical rationale is important. Where is there so much new technology to learn? It’s all the same. Everything.
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Technical details matter. Where’s all that planning?
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Real code is much more persuasive to programmers than some esoteric management theory.
I said this in a speech last year.
Some say ctos that don’t write code have a higher profile and a broader vision. I don’t think so.
No matter how big the stage is, it is actually composed of one small detail after another. Details can not only determine the final level of the whole thing, but also change the overall development direction of the thing, and even determine the success or failure of any thing.
Ignoring details and discarding code is like a warrior discarding his sword or a tiger pulling out his teeth.
When a technical man from the technical details, just like a broken line of kite, when there is no wind, perhaps you can leisurely gurgling drift for a while, suddenly a gust of wind, you will fly without trace.
But if you have a mine at home, be my guest.
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