The confusion of junior engineers
A small partner once contacted me in the background to ask some questions. A fan asked this question:
Blogger, I would like to ask you a question that has plagued me for a long time. From graduation to the present, I have been engaged in the development of big data platform, mainly to build CDH peripheral products, and develop some BI products and internal analysis systems on the basis. I like this job very much, but it is too far away from the business, and I rarely understand what BI products and data platforms users need. Therefore, every time I see a data analyst contact, there is really no need to combine my own ideas with the business, and the value recognized by the boss, I will be envious. At present, the company's big data platform products are not very mature, and I, who need to be the core personnel of the technology platform, are more valued. But with the improvement of the company's data platform, will I be eliminated for those who do not understand business?
I am very pleased to receive this news. First of all, as a student who has just graduated for two years, being able to have this kind of thinking about danger in times of peace has surpassed a large part of the workplace. Secondly, I actually have a similar experience with this classmate, and I am willing to share some of my thoughts.
Technology or business
First of all, in fact, except for a few positions that do not need to understand business, most technical positions in companies need to understand business. With the gradual maturity of the big data platform, with the platform development position, they mainly need to pay attention to the functions of the platform. , There is no need to pay attention to specific business logic, and there is a problem of disconnection from the business for developers of large data platforms. As developers, we often laugh at product managers who only understand business but not technology, but I can tell you clearly that they will not become the core backbone in most companies if they only understand technology but not technology. Technology will always be Serving business, especially in commercial companies. This is also the difference between fresh graduate students and senior engineers. After five years of work, most engineers will become business experts in a certain field, able to combine business and technology flexibly, solve practical problems in the company, and see some When there is a technical problem, the problem will be solved through business adaptation. So in actual work, how do we balance the relationship between technology and business?
Remember the following sentence: Don't forget to think when writing code!
Former colleague
I once met a colleague who developed an XX analysis application system, but when a business person asked him how this data came from, he didn't understand at all. It was just a sentence. This needs to be asked by the product manager. It is true to ask the product manager, but as the core developer of the system, you must also clearly know the logic of each interface development and the business of the service. We always laugh at product managers for not knowing technology. Does the product treat development as a code machine?
Even as a development engineer at the bottom of the platform, most of the time he optimizes the reading and writing, but you don't know the reading and writing scenarios. How to optimize? Just blindly upgrading technology? Increase memory? On a solid state drive? You need to understand when the access peaks and in which scenarios are high concurrent reading? Which scenarios write high concurrency? In what business scenario is that complicated query SQL triggered? These are all things you need to understand as a development engineer. Maybe you have spent a lot of time and resources to solve a slow query, which can be solved only by a conversion from a business perspective.
my story
I remember that when we were doing data development, the leader assigned us a task to look at the design documents of the business system. Now that I think about it, I am really grateful to the leader for showing me a clear path. Later, a senior engineer came to the team. Within a month of joining the company, he became familiar with the company's various business systems. Some of the information collected was not contacted by us after two years of work. Through this incident, I also developed this habit. After entering a new company, I first used various resources to obtain the knowledge documents of the business system currently developed by the company and familiarize myself with what the company is doing.
Of course, it’s easy to say this. In fact, if you want to think about learning in addition to doing your own job well, you may need to work overtime. When it comes to working overtime, many people are extremely disgusted, but me too! But in the initial stage, there will be such a stage where one or two people in each office will leave late, and then you will find that these people will either leave or become your leader.
Data product
When you are familiar with the company's products, R&D personnel can also become product managers. Especially with the increasing popularity of big data platforms, a new position has come: data product manager. This position is really not what ordinary product managers can do. If you don't understand a few big data technology stacks and back-end system design, you really can't take this job.
Puzzle
So, now I want to say to the big data development classmate, take advantage of this, to understand the company’s business, talk more with colleagues in data analysis, and talk about user needs with products, don’t be confused, maybe the data product is yours direction.