Author: Jiuwu

How time flies! In the blink of an eye, it has been a year since I joined Ali. A lot of things happened in this year, which was very rich and wonderful on the whole. I kept making mistakes in one thing after another. Along the way, I stumbled and gained a lot of growth. Each time after the end of one thing, after a short period of quiet life again to embark on a new journey.

I have written a article titled “The author of the bestseller Vue. Js, the harvest and growth of ali Tao Department in 6 months” before, so the text mainly tells the growth of the harvest in the “second half year”.

1. On “Thinking”

  • Mentor: What do you do on weekends?

  • Me: I usually read books, write code, and research something I’m interested in when I’m free

  • Mentor: Can you take some of the time you normally spend doing nothing and just sit there and “think” and think

The above dialogue comes from a question I asked my tutor once: “How should I go further, what is the difference between 7 and 8” (roughly this question, I can’t remember the original question 😿).

The difference between 7 and 8 in terms of level itself is that “more resources can be mobilized.” More resources need to be mobilized because more complex things need to be done. Where’s the complication? Of course, it can also be assigned by the supervisor, but who can guarantee that the supervisor will allocate that opportunity to him?

Relying entirely on my supervisor to assign opportunities also goes against my own belief that I should make things special for myself. Can pass the interview today into the alibaba’s classmate, ability is bad, another person in charge of distributing the opportunity to get the probability of the results won’t be much worse than I, whether a thing is because I do get a good result, and everyone can get a good result to do, not to say that this short * * “let things because of their extraordinary” * * standards.

Only when you create opportunities out of thin air and finally get the results, can you conform to the “make things special for you” ** and show your level.

So a more reliable path is:

  1. Think about the future development direction of the project and the existing technology system

  2. Make a judgment call and act in the right direction

  3. Big enough things create a need to mobilize more resources

  4. When the time is right, they may be promoted to the next level to facilitate the mobilization of additional resources

This raises a new question, “What if the direction you think the project is going is different from the direction the team is going?”

In fact, don’t worry about it. You can communicate with your supervisor more and focus on it. If the objective direction obtained by your own thinking is actually the right direction (with higher benefits in all aspects) or most people believe it is the right direction, then the right direction will definitely replace the wrong direction.

2. Technology and business walk on two legs

Must “technology and business walk on two legs”. This was the advice my supervisor and my mentor gave me, and when two experienced bosses gave me the same advice, it was enough to prove the weight of this sentence, and it also set me thinking.

Since I started to work, I am only engaged in technology, and I am not interested in business. I admire those famous world’s top engineers with strong technology, and MY dream has always been to become one of them, and to become the world’s top engineer with outstanding technology in the front-end industry.

But now I’ve come to realize that it’s good for me to think more about my business, not just about technology. The benefits of thinking more about my business are:

  1. Lay out the technical system in advance, lead the technology and project, avoid being passive when the business changes suddenly

  2. Reform and breakthrough should be made on the “relatively mature” and “bottleneck” technology system supporting the existing business

  3. Avoid being a “tool man”

Let “technology” and “business” achieve each other and grow together. Business growth drives technology improvement, and technology improvement drives business. As a technical student, I can assist the business with technical projects based on my prediction of the business, and the success of the business will in turn contribute to the technology.

Don’t fall into the big mistake that technology doesn’t really contribute much.

All great technological innovations are those that contribute a great deal to society. Great technologies are born out of an unmet “need”, which is basically how great technologies are created (Git, React, Vue or the technology system behind the company’s business).

Only if you understand the business and think deeply enough to know what users want, can you lead the technology system that will support the business in the future, and can you create great technologies that will change the world.

It is difficult to “lead” and “innovate” by focusing on technology alone. Most of the time, we can only learn the existing technology created by others, learn to master it and become an expert in a certain field, but it is difficult to lead a certain technical field.

3. Smart water bottle

Players who play steadily (linear growth) have an advantage over those who play peaks and valleys periodically, and stability (predictability) is an advantage in itself. If you are in charge, do you dare to hand over to an unstable player? In case of weak time, it will be a tragedy.

This principle is the same in e-sports, sports and other fields. It is impossible to win a championship if you do not play steadily.

Just entering a company, in a new environment will be a little anxious, anxious to get results and recognition, which is actually a good thing in itself, but do not make too much effort, into the peaks and troughs of the player. Relax a bit, make a bit less strength, let their linear growth and stable play. After all, career is supposed to be a “long race without a finish”. The race is not about who can run faster in a short period of time, but about “persistence”. It is not the fast runners who win on this track, but the few who keep running, who win simply because they are still running.

4. Agree to disagree

At some point, I finally understood those four words, and it started with one thing.

At first, in order to help team members to “promote personal writing”, “expressive ability”, “improve technical and personal growth”, I put forward the plan, team members each person to write an article about every five months, and invented the “bailey system” as the rewards and punishment mechanism, per month, according to a certain number of automatic bailey, pele off much needs to be punished, As long as I guarantee to write an article every 5 months, Bailey will not reach the penalty line. The specific value is calculated by me, and I wrote a program to automatically execute it. The Bailey in my hand can be exchanged for some gifts, such as HHKB and AirPods.

Later, the “essay Project” was challenged by everyone, and I felt that it caused great pressure and burden to everyone, so the “essay Project” came to an end. However, I retained the “Bailey system”. Although I did not force everyone to write essays, I still encouraged students who volunteered to write essays and gave rewards to Bailey.

At this time, I thought about Bailey’s system and repositioned it as “measurement system”, which measures the contribution value of team members to “team building”, “organizational culture” and “horizontal contribution”, so as to facilitate the horizontal construction of team and culture. To put it simply, I will reward All the students who have made contributions to the team according to their contributions. There is a ranking, and the higher ranking means more contributions to the team. I will give some gifts to those students who have made more contributions.

I hope that there will be a deeper combination between The Pele system and the horizontal work of the team, such as: team building, recruitment, safety production, writing articles, sharing technology, making suggestions for improvement of existing products, organizing everyone to exercise, organizing everyone to play board games, etc.

Therefore, one day, I came up with an idea: let the people who make less contributions hold the team building, and give rewards to the people who hold the team building. The main consideration is to give more opportunities to the students who make less lateral contributions to the team. In addition, there are some interesting ways to combine Pele in the process of team building, such as the initial equipment can be set according to the number of Pele (Pele is tall, which gives the team building a slight advantage in playing the game, but without losing balance).

But the suggestion was rejected by the team’s construction colleague (because he thought Pele was not objective and could not objectively measure who contributed less). I felt at the time that it was a good thing to do for the team, that it might not be perfect for a while, but I would keep improving, that I was “doing the right thing”. And on the spot I asked my colleagues where I think there are defects that need to be improved can not be said, plus I think I am doing the right thing to make the team better, so I have a big fight with my colleagues, yes, I have double 叒 yi and people quarrel, and this is particularly intense.

I did a lot of introspection about myself. After I created the pele system out of thin air, it was not very popular for users or partners. Facing customers, team members find it stressful and burdensome. For partners, team lateral leaders have no incentive or need to work with the Bailey system. It’s not a big deal in itself, but it’s a very difficult thing to do. Pele has been rejected, ignored and regarded as a niche game between a few people.

But I didn’t want to give up. I wanted to make a difference for our team because OF me, and I believed it was the right thing to do and a good thing to do. I talked to my supervisor two or three times, learned some knowledge and how to do things, and summarized the essence:

  • Do not take yourself as the center to think about problems, to change to the “team perspective”, “cooperation perspective” all-round three-dimensional and multidimensional thinking

  • Things to consider: “win-win”, “altruism”

Since the birth of pele’s system, all the “rules” (including what contribution should be rewarded and how much) have been set by me alone. People are “disapproved” internally, so the external expression is “you play your own game, I don’t participate”. Put yourself in someone else’s shoes. We all resist things we “don’t approve of.”

At this moment, I finally realized and understood what is called “seeking common ground and respecting differences”. Everyone is different and not everyone has the same ideas as themselves. We should respect different suggestions and voices. One thing, only we recognized to win respect and success, to win the recognition of customers, to win the recognition of partners.

Follow-up:

After this incident, I voted on the existing “rules” through an anonymous questionnaire, which should be rewarded, how much should be rewarded and which should not be rewarded, and modified them according to the results of the questionnaire.

All rules are determined by anonymous voting, and the rules are “open and transparent”, with all members “participating together”. And provide daily “real name” and “anonymous” double channel to receive feedback, and give feedback to the students reward Bailey. The ways of acquiring and consuming Pele have also become more diverse. And these new and diverse ways to acquire and consume Pele are all contributed by team members. After a series of adjustments, the overall recognition has been greatly improved compared to the previous, pele system in a better direction.

The year before also distributed gifts of equal value to everyone according to the number of peles, and started a new cycle, everyone was very happy.

Although it is not big, but it taught me “how to promote things”, in the future I have big probability to break the existing “mature” and even “curing” technical system, do some improvement for existing technology system, to make it better, then promote and win the “recognition” and “respect” and it is the same, through this matter, I got the exercise in advance, It’s a priceless treasure.

5. How does a PM work

Thanks for the cultivation and trust of my supervisor, who not only gave me a lot of room for trial and error, but also taught me how to do the right thing after I made mistakes.

5.1 Risk and Progress shall be synchronized in a timely manner

As for risk synchronization, I have mentioned it in “My Half-year Harvest of Growth in Ali”, and recently I have a new insight: do not worry about “doing badly” or “imperfect” and dare not synchronize progress and risk, because “poor information” is much better than “no information”!

The benefit of synchronizing “risk” and “progress” in a timely manner is that if something is really wrong, it can be corrected and helped to ensure that the project is safe, and project safety is always the first priority. Don’t worry that everyone will think that no one cares about their own dishes or dishes. Everyone cares about:

  1. Whether the project can be delivered “on time” and “of high quality”

  2. Are you growing

Even if one step is wrong in the middle, it is countless times better than “no news” in the middle. Even if you get things wrong, you’ll eventually see growth as you keep pace with your risks and schedule and make mistakes while getting things right. Will be very at ease with themselves, the next time similar things to their own people will be at ease, because no matter how bad, they will not mess things up.

5.2 How to Deal with online Problems

When there is an accident on the line, report it up immediately, don’t be bored to repair yourself first! Avoid the business side to come over completely unaware of the director, this situation will be very passive!

Ways to feedback questions:

  1. Describe the problem from the user’s perspective

  2. Impact surface Estimation (Impact surface for users. If the fault is not detected, it is considered as a major impact by default.)

  3. Handling strategy

  4. If there is a reason, provide the reason

5.3 Don’t treat yourself as your only resource

When you receive a task, first consider how to do it better, who is the best person to do it, and don’t treat yourself as the only resource.

Let the right person take charge of the right thing. After receiving the task, the first thing to think about is how to do it well and who is more suitable to do it. If you are good at a certain area, you can do it by yourself; if there is a more suitable person for a certain area, you should find the right person to do it instead of doing it yourself.

5.4 “pessimistic” attitude to reply

If the evaluation is not sure whether a certain function can be launched on time, we will give feedback with a “pessimistic” attitude (essentially, it is to improve professionalism, predict risks and do a good job in expected management). Novice PMS often make the mistake of saying “I’ll try” to the product even though they think the development will not be finished before the Deadline.

What I have seen, besides me and novice PM also make this mistake, that is, one sentence: “I will try” (I think it is too late, but I still say to the product that it is too late, but I will try my best). When the product finally fails to launch on schedule, it will come to ask why it is not launched and “do not accept” the result.

So, if the assessment is inaccurate, or there is a sense of risk, always give a pessimistic response. If there is a chance of being late at first, give “clear feedback” at the outset.

5.5 Make technical judgments

The most important core competency and responsibility of a technical PM is called technical judgment. Like double the big contributors to this level, every function of upstream and downstream link is very complex, spanning more than N team, this means that the same thing, can have N kind of solution, but the different team view Angle is different, so everyone give scheme and orientation of a lot of time there will be conflicts, this technology PM to do is to give a technical judgment, What are the advantages and disadvantages of plan 1, 2, 3? Let the senior students decide. Instead of throwing a problem at the seniors and asking them to come up with a solution. Because the lower the level of information is known more, the higher the details of the less information.

6. Summary

Unconsciously, I have been in Ali for a year. This year is my fastest growing year in recent years, my thinking and ideas have been improved qualitatively. I am very grateful to Shuwen for bringing me to this team. It is very difficult for me to join this team due to my academic background. I often feel that I really met a noble person by luck. I am also very grateful to Mo Ming (my supervisor) for her continuous teaching and giving opportunities for trial and error. Most of my growth in the past year comes from Her teaching. I feel so lucky again.

Believe in the future, I will assume greater responsibility in the actual combat, believe in the future, I will make our team because of my existence become different.

Finally, I have learned a principle from Shuwen, which I particularly agree with:

Learn to insist that “long-term accumulation” is always better than “frequent switching for short-term high returns”, whether it is “daily work”, “investment”, “career planning”, “life planning”, etc.

Schauvin often says that there are many factors that go into getting something done, and persistence is the least expensive one.