I saw a topic on the Internet: how about going to Ali Tao department to do technology? Is it worth it for fresh graduates to graduate? We invited two students who entered the tao Department of Technology through college admission to answer this question. Air Cheng: Graduated from Zhejiang University with a master’s degree in computer science, majoring in graphics algorithm. Niancheng: Master of Department of Systems Engineering, Chinese University of Hong Kong. I have been admitted by the university in 2021.
Tao Technology – Aveo
Cheng Kong, master degree in computer science from Zhejiang University, majoring in graphics algorithm. In 2018, the school recruited the technical backend post of the Department of Job Tao. When I was hired, I could not write Java… Now TAO department has been working for 3 years. In the first year, my main direction is to maintain a mature and stable system, and in the second two years, I will participate in the research and development of a new technology platform, which can be regarded as a combination of two kinds of experience.
When the school recruits, tao department will not limit you because you are not in this direction
When I graduated, I found myself in a tough job market in graphics. There are not many companies in the field, mainly in VR and AR, so I broadened my scope of application. When I was interviewed by Tao Department, I was cross-directional and cross-lingual, and I only wrote some scripting languages on the client side in my previous internship experience. What impressed me deeply was that the interviewer did not deliberately make things difficult for me in the fields I did not know. He mainly asked me some open questions based on the projects I had done in school and the papers I had handed out, such as my own thoughts and ideas in project practice. It’s not the language skills themselves that are important, these are all transferable, it’s more about future plasticity. I think some thought and enthusiasm is key. At that time, all the offers of BAT were collected, and finally I chose Amoy back-end development. On the one hand, I study in Hangzhou, like Hangzhou want to stay; On the other hand, I attach great importance to taobao platform. After all, it is an aircraft carrier-level APP. I want to learn and understand the structure and system in depth.
In the first year, I did “gateway & Technical Support” on Taobao.
When I just joined the company, I was very excited. A ready-made and mature system was placed in front of me, with tens of millions of QPS. I had never come into contact with such a huge system in school. All taobao business requests pass through this gateway, and its core key is stability guarantee. Most of my early job was to maintain it, discreetly. I was very cautious when I received requests. A small change could affect a lot of things. I often had to drag my senior and colleagues along to see the impact of the change. For the adorable new at that time, the impact was great, and the knowledge was much. In addition, I was also responsible for answering questions of the whole group through this system. To my surprise, answering questions soon put me in a fog. There were a lot of inquiries and questions, and I responded to them as quickly as I could. As a result, I found myself extremely inefficient and unproductive… Ali will assign a senior to all new employees to help them adapt and learn from work to life. My senior brother quickly noticed my problem, and he reminded me to learn to plan my time and prioritize things. Inspired by him, I did four things:
- Set fixed q&A working hours
- Review all queries carefully, and deploy automated response bots for repetitive questions
- Integration and reconstruction of the existing user help documents & q&A techniques, still used today
- What is the general demand behind the consulting problem and how to solve it fundamentally
In doing so, I helped the business solve its problems and freed up my own workforce. There were many other times like this. For example, when I first came here, my senior brother told me about the evolution of the team structure and the modules that each person was responsible for. This “human” perspective was actually very interesting, which enabled me to have a deeper understanding of why the current product is like this and what role I could play. I am very grateful for the guidance and help given to me by the brothers of Tao Department. 】
In my second year, I started doing things from zero to one
That was a pretty sharp turn. After April of ’19, we brought in a new team to build a new r&d platform. Without any historical baggage, we need to think and build something new systematically, not just technologically. The scene, value and significance of this thing need to be considered constantly when it is constructed, and even extended to consider the evolution of the business in the future. As we explored, many complex problems have no clear or mature solutions in the industry, and some open source things in the community have not been proven in practice. Taobao is a commercial company, what we value is business value, what we value is whether this thing can really be used. There were so many problems that I didn’t think about when I was doing maintenance on the old system. I used to worry that I couldn’t learn anything in a systematic way at work. I only got various skills in bits and pieces. My supervisor and senior told me that there was no need to worry too much about this. The purpose of learning now was to solve problems and grow in constant combat and exercise. What I learned could be put into practice and tested immediately. And from a higher level of learning, through piecemeal learning, to grow their own piece of knowledge system, is the real digestion and absorption. As for the technical development prospect in Tao Department, for me, the experience of doing new platform research and development makes me gradually establish myself as an architect in the future. From the beginning of the module I was responsible for, from the division of function points and interfaces in my code, I gradually learned to disassemble and abstract a requirement and extend it into small pieces to solve it. As MY abilities grow, my perspective and boundaries expand, and the problems that require abstraction become more complex. Research and development platform – requirements – code writing – testing – resource delivery at the bottom of the whole link issues and perspectives are very tedious, which is also the direction I want to constantly improve myself. In tao department, such opportunities are very much, to exchange and discussion of the predecessors and colleagues are also a lot. I will also look at the ATA technical community within the group and the website of Ali Learning. The professional experience and knowledge accumulated by everyone are very valuable.
Finally, I would like to say something to the younger students
I’ve been here for 3 years. In general, the growth of these three years is in line with my expectations, and I am more happy to find my favorite and exciting direction. If I go back to the year when I picked the offer, it is like the subject’s current choice situation. Based on my past experience, I think it is mainly a matter of choice. First of all, how do you get these opportunities? These need not go into detail, enhance their hard power. Secondly, how to balance these opportunities? The most important thing is to follow your heart, everyone’s situation is not the same, some people pay most attention to the location, some people pay most attention to salary and so on. If you have a clear idea of what you want most and go with it, it’s even better if you have a long-term vision and know where you want to go. In addition, from the perspective of experienced people, salary this thing to slightly put a long-term view, the pattern is a little bit bigger, the starting salary gap is far less than three or five years later, a lot of communication and elder brothers, some things are in the future to see. Finally, MY team is the technical department-Tao Architecture team, responsible for the r&d and construction of one-stop SERVERless R&D platform, and constantly improving r&d efficiency and ultimate R&D experience for the business. The platform has steadily supported Amoy department interaction, Amoy Treasure life, gold manor, idle fish, special edition and other businesses of 6.18, Double 11, double 12, Spring Festival Gala and other big promotion activities. If you are interested in cloud native, Serverless/FaaS, K8S or infrastructure, please join us! Email: [email protected] Other teams are also very good, welcome everyone to tao department technology, common communication progress ~
Tao technology – Niancheng
Niancheng, engineering girl of 22
Choice of direction
After a period of product and algorithm internship experience, I finally chose back-end research and development. From undergraduate to master, MY major was computer science. However, since I was an undergraduate, countless people have told me that girls are not suitable for technology, and many of my classmates with the same major have also gone to work unrelated to technology. I thought I might be suitable for a product job, so I interned with a small company for a while. Although the process from product design to r&d launch brought me some pleasure, I found that compared with some design of product functions, the feeling of developing products from 0-1 gave me a greater sense of achievement. So I still want to be a solid technical person — that’s what I want. Before graduation, his algorithm were employed more severe, you can actually see these two years on the number of various public duty algorithm more competitive (such as “a piece of the sea”, “burst”), will also want to choose the students in the laboratory as employment in the direction of the more consideration, so oneself also enlarged the scope of cover. Although I have no previous research and development experience, in the interview of Ali, it is obvious that the interviewer values your learning and thinking ability, problem-solving ability, and your enthusiasm for technology. The language skills that many students focus on are not the most important. They are transferable and learnable in the future.
Entering the tao is
When I first joined Ali as an intern, I felt uneasy and anxious because I did not have too much research and development foundation. However, after arriving, this kind of anxiety gradually disappeared, instead, I felt more impetus and sense of achievement in work and study. When I first arrived, I was assigned to a super nice brother. In other companies, there will be a mentor to guide you, but in Ali, the concept of senior brother is closer, more like a senior, a good friend. The fraternity gave me a lot of help in life and technology. Before coming to the company, they would care about my rental situation and often ask me whether I am comfortable with the environment here and so on. In terms of technology, my senior would familiarize me with the business of the department at the beginning and gradually assign me some small requirements to complete. For example, when I first came here, my brother asked me to work on data link migration. Although I was not familiar with it, I gradually grasped the basic ideas of data migration through reading technical documents and communicating with my senior. In the team, besides my senior brother, other colleagues in our team are also very nice (maybe they are technical people). I was not familiar with the back-end framework before, and another senior of mine would patiently tell me which theoretical basis of the framework should be mastered and which points should be put into practice. And this constant input and output gave me more confidence in the road ahead.
A change in mindset
In the team, everyone would not ignore me just because I was a little intern, but would listen to everyone’s ideas carefully and give interns more opportunities to practice. It was this kind of team atmosphere that enabled me to participate more in the project. About a month after joining the company, I participated in the development of a project in Mobile Shopping, and experienced requirements review, design review, subsequent development, testing and launching of the project. From development to launch, every problem I encounter is a harvest for me. I hope that the code can bring value to the business, but also hope that their technical level has been improved. After going online, I will also check the log situation every day, whether there are exceptions and errors in the log, what are the reasons for exceptions and errors and so on. At the same time, I also shared the online data with the team and gradually had more thinking about the business.
Positive reply
Before the internship was transferred to the defense, I actually made a mistake, thinking that the internal staff might pay more attention to your workload. However, after communicating with my senior brothers and colleagues, I found that the supervisor and the interviewer paid more attention to how you did and whether you had thought and learned something of your own in the project. For example, when I used the company’s middleware TAIR and TDDL in the project, the interviewer would ask about their specific principles. It is not enough to simply know how to use them, but to go deep into the principles and essence. In addition, the interviewer also values the technical basis. For example, I used the chain of responsibility design mode in the project, so I need to have a clear understanding of why and how to use it.
Turn the defense of the last of the younger brother sister
I know many students will feel confused about the direction and employment before they start work. However, if you are passionate about your direction and you are sure that it is the path you want to follow, go for it. You don’t have to follow the trend, because the best people will shine through. In the future spring recruitment, autumn recruitment or daily recruitment, as soon as possible to plan their own direction, as soon as possible internship, will also find their own direction refueling in these three months, I harvest what I want, but also determine the direction I continue to work hard.
Ali Tao department is really a good platform for fresh graduates, and tao department also values the potential of students ~
Hope you can also find their own love and exciting direction ~
May there be stars and oceans in your eyes, and courage and love in your heart.