On the unknown road of growth, we will always meet all kinds of problems, but all the confusion and adversity can help us grow, we should seize every opportunity to make progress, rather than lingering there.

Tao department front-end development student – Lin Wan, today to share with you his seven years of growth experience, and how to get rid of the business front-end career confusion.

Personal experience

My experience is relatively simple. I have been working in Ali since graduation.

From 2007 to 2013, I studied communication engineering in Wuhan University and minored in animation.

After graduation in 2013, I joined Alibaba International website. In B2B stage, I was interested in animation and innovative interaction. I applied for 6 related patents, some of which have been authorized and earned the first bucket of gold in my life: 50,000 😁

I transferred to Ant Word-of-mouth in 2015 and was mainly responsible for interactive marketing and quality testing.

In 2018, I learned about Taobao Live broadcasting and wanted to continue to work deeply in the multimedia field. In the past two years, I was mainly responsible for the opening of ALive live broadcasting and the construction of multimedia front-end field.

All three stages have certain growth and have been recognized. Here is my seven years with you, hoping to give you some guidance when you are in a confused period.

Phase review

The review of each stage is divided into the following stages and summarizes my key words in each stage:

• Toss something (something)
• What is the dominant point (line)
• What is the breakthrough point (surface)
• Leading point what (body)

Stir something up

Entering the workplace

Can you remember the first requirement you made?

My first requirement is to make a category selector, index, sort. I remember it was Friday at that time. After understanding the demand, I told my senior that I would finish the demand for two days over the weekend and it could be finished next Monday. At that time, the senior brother smiled. At that time, I did not know the complete process of a requirement, which needed to be reviewed, scheduled, developed, coordinated and tested before it could be released.

Later, I gradually got familiar with the working process of the company, and began to do projects one by one, which was substantial but dull. In the first performance, I got 3.25. After the performance communication, I wrote a few words to myself, “Shame and courage”. I had to do something.

Take a chestnut

What are we gonna do? I would like to share with you an example: AT that time, I liked to use Baidu to search for pictures of beautiful women, but the browsing experience of the list was not very good. Therefore, I designed and realized a effect that I could wander in any direction indefinitely, and each direction represented a style type, which could be recommended in real time. Something like this:

It’s exciting to see so many beautiful women after a night of coding. Wondering if it could be combined with work, I packaged the concept and applied for a patent on product loading and recommendation. After applying for the patent, I wanted to see if it could be used in the business, so I did the product design by myself, searched for the operation and talked about the scene, and finally launched it in a procurement activity in Russia. The conversion rate of the business effect from List to Detail was 3.5 times higher than that of the traditional List form.

A total of 6 similar patents have been applied for in the international station, one of which has been authorized by the National Patent Office, and the others have been recommended by the Ministry of Justice to apply for overseas patents.

Stages of growth and confusion

International station, let me complete the transition from school to the workplace. Looking back now, I can see that my growth in the international station is very big and has a great influence on my career development. To sum up, there are mainly the following aspects of growth:

• Professionalism: avoid emotional impact on work; Structured thinking and expression
• Business and data thinking: Develop the habit of in-depth understanding of the business, data thinking to see output and value
• Technology combined with business: not technology for technology’s sake, but technology based on business scenarios
• Team perspective: Turn individual ability into team ability (for example, combine my own experience in animation, organize animation interest group in the team, build animation platform Zhuma Station)

At this stage, I also had some confusion. Some of the things I struggled with did not quite match the business scene. International stations were all b-end scenes, while I paid more attention to the effect and interaction of C-end. After consideration, I made a decision to move to the C-terminal and transferred to the innovative business alipay Koubei at that time.

Dominate what

Business bearer

In the word-of-mouth phase, your career is more mature and can lead some core things. In terms of business, I became a porter, responsible for the construction of some core channels and columns of reputation, such as big-brand buying, travel edition, etc. Combined with my previous experience in the field of animation, I also took the first position in the marketing activities of animation games in the team.

How to do business well? Share a case of big brand buying.

Business needs to be fully understood and thought before doing:

• What is the position of the business? I have classified the c-end business of word-of-mouth into three dimensions: “looking for stores”, “looking for discounts” and “looking for content”, operating data in various forms and scenarios. The channel’s position in the whole C-end business is a shopping mode operation scenario designed for “looking for discounts”.
• What are the characteristics of the business? The processing complexity of coupons is very high because there are multiple sessions, multiple states for each session, and the sources, states and types of coupons are very rich. In addition, because it is the scene of buying tickets, the timeliness of information requirements are relatively high, inventory status and receiving status and other information need to be timely updated.
• What is the challenge settlement? Such as vouchers processing complexity is very high, I abstract a unified data structure, the structure of the various dimensions of securities made clear division, various dimensions of cross combinations can draw a lot of kinds, in order to ensure that data structure change or after extension, the view can convenient management, I did a show for a, draw a set of display mode, and can be extended.

For example, to make the annual list of word-of-mouth, I did not regard it as a one-off animation requirement, but settled a set of standardized processing procedures for animation requirements through this project: animation stratification, dynamic effect disassembly, business decoupling and technical realization. To provide a more efficient, flexible and high-complex land processing scheme for subsequent animation requirements.

Techniques to overcome

In terms of technology, I led the real machine detection platform inkstone of word-of-mouth, and constructed the real machine detection scheme of word-of-mouth from 0-1. This is a complex project. The server is implemented through the CHAIR application, which also includes socket service and HTTP service. Socket service is mainly responsible for group grouping, agent management, task event processing, data reception and transfer, etc. The HTTP service mainly provides pages, interfaces, data processing and reading and writing, and data storage uses the DB service provided by Basement. The Agent layer, which maintains a long link with socket service, is responsible for the management of mobile devices, heartbeat check, polling and reporting to the server, and is also responsible for receiving and delivering commands, data collection and other work; Finally, there is the real device, which connects to the Agent host through ADB.

The whole system was complicated, so I led the design of the whole scheme and connected the client to complete the landing. In the middle process, I also solved some key technical problems, such as how to implement socket service with Chair, how to communicate between processes, and how to synchronize socket with docker deployed multiple containers.

Stages of growth and confusion

After the business and technology experience in word-of-mouth, there are mainly the following aspects of growth:

• Business ownership: take care of the business as their own children, experience more and think more every day
• Do business more need technical thinking: big brands snap up the cocoons, insight
• System architecture and technical breakthrough: the overall architecture of inkstone, chair application and socket service

After staying in Koubei for 3 years, I began to feel confused again: what I do are all lines, key channels, marketing business and real machine detection. Will my follow-up development continue along these lines? How much will MY changes be if I continue to do this for a few more years? The question here is: linear development, what is my technical domain?

Considering that I majored in communication engineering and digital media, my graduation project is also a video conference system based on WebRTC, which has some multimedia foundation. The barriers in this field are deep and the space is large, so I want to focus on the development of multimedia front-end and transfer to Taobao Live.

What’s the breakthrough?

Rollover and counterattack

The first project I took over was the intimacy in the studio, which was an H5 page written by a classmate on the client side. It was unbearable to debug in the studio at that time, and the end-to-end scheme was actually very immature.

In daily iterations, it can barely cope, but when it comes to large parties with lots of complex real-time interactions, the problem is exposed most vividly. The “Double 11” fashion ceremony in 2018 was the darkest stage of the whole live broadcast team. For several consecutive overnight bug fixes in CR code, there were still many problems at the party. Bug fixes were released while live broadcast, and some functions were even downgraded and offline.

After coming back from Beijing, we thought over the pain and began to reconstruct the end-to-end plan of live broadcasting, abstracted the container of live broadcasting and provided the supporting project debugging link. A few months later, the people’s Baby, which cooperated with Double 12 and Mango TV, implemented this plan. From the scene, we could see a peaceful scene.

The interaction rate and stay time of the live broadcast room are very core indicators. We have initiated the media intelligence project with innovation and breakthrough, and brought streaming media interaction solutions to Taobao live broadcast.

As well as the basic player, our VideoX is also entering the deep waters of multimedia as a technology project.

Soul four torture

For the above mentioned projects, we always think about the following questions at the initial stage: who the customer is, what problem to solve, what technical solution to use, and what value to bring. After thinking about these problems, it is basically clear whether the project should be done and how to do it. The next step is to refine the plan and implement the implementation.

At the same time, the team will produce a big picture, so that everyone can see the whole picture, but also understand the relationship between each other, better single point breakthrough, comprehensive cooperation, cohesion as a heart, fight a battle together.

Stages of growth and confusion

At this stage of live broadcast, I summarized my growth in the following aspects:

• Industry insight and prediction: a comprehensive understanding of their own business, competitive trends; Anticipate the trend, advance the layout, and push back the business (such as the ALive live mini program)
• Innovation breakthrough: The stay time and interaction rate have decreased. How to seize the user’s time and innovate the interactive streaming media for live video scenes
• Technical deep water area: player in addition to multi-protocol support, low latency optimization, single instance control, etc., self-developed player kernel
• Influence: ALive, Media Intelligence, VideoX to build the team’s technology brand, cross-BU influence

At the present stage, I am still confused, but not in the direction of confusion, but in the multimedia field, what is the core value of the front end? How to do deep do thick? Next, we will try to build a Web Media system at the group level.

What to lead

My work achievements in the past two years have been recognized, and I have been promoted to a new level and have new challenges for myself. I think we need to lead something next.

Since last year, Latone Group has also made some attempts in this aspect. For example, latone Group organized multimedia special sharing, devoted its team to creating multimedia front-end knowledge map and supporting front-end manual, sorting out multimedia front-end map of economy, etc. Next, it will continue to build Web Media, a multimedia front-end system at the group level. Also joining the W3C’s MEIG Media & Entertainment Interests group this year www.w3.org/groups/ig/m… Currently working in this organization to follow and promote W3C standards on media.

Some feeling

As to how to get rid of or attenuate the confusion of career in front of business, I think the most important thing is to find a subdivision direction that I am willing to continue to learn and accumulate domain knowledge. I found it on my own, and I will continue to develop in the field of multimedia. Now I have no confusion in direction. Students who have worked for 3-5 years should answer the question, what is their technical field? Front-end engineering, NodeJS, data visualization, interaction, architecture, multimedia? The confusion at the front end of the business will be much weaker if you identify your technical domain.

We all have great business pressure when doing business, but the company requires us to reflect technical value in addition to business, which requires us to think fully before doing things. When evaluating a project, think about three things: what is the business goal, what is the technology team’s strategy, and what is our value as the front end. If the three questions are clear, before and after the cohesion is also correct, this matter is reliable.

I hope you can still be as naughty as you were when you first came to Ali, and keep that naughty, even childish, if you still have any.

Tao department front end team

I am mainly responsible for taobao live broadcast, short video and other multimedia businesses. I continue to research and practice in the directions of live broadcast low-delay push-pull streaming, video non-wire weaving, player, media intelligence, streaming media interaction, multimedia opening, etc. I focus on audio and video Web technology and devote myself to building a top multimedia front-end technology team in China.

If you are interested in our team, please write to us 📮 : [email protected]