How did I become the R&D director step by step
status quo
I graduated from a university in 13 years. My first job was testing. Later I transferred to R&D. Then I became R&D manager and supervisor. I currently serve as the CTO of a technology company, managing a 51-person technical team. Terminal development department, front-end development department (APP, page development), operation and maintenance department, testing department. The management mode is pyramid mode.
Now I will share with you the bitter road from Xiaobai technology to R&D director. Those who want to transfer from technology to management can be patient and careful.
First entry into society: the first job test engineer
Looking for a job: I graduated from university in 13 years. Since I studied computer science and technology for 4 years, I wanted to find a software research and development job after graduation. I began to send all kinds of resumes widely, and finally a listed company called me. I started to apply for a job, but unfortunately I didn't have an interview due to lack of experience just after graduation. After a day, HR asked me if I was interested in software testing, but without any hesitation, I agreed in one go. The salary was opened for 3,500 January.
Self-taught R&D: After joining this company, I am unwilling to be a basic software test engineer. I started to systematically study software development-related content (JQuery, SSH (the most popular JAVA Web framework of the year)) after work. It happened that my work flow was that developers write code, and then testers were responsible for packaging, deploying, and going online. I can get a deeper exposure to the source code content. In this way, after a year and a half, my research and development skills began to further improve.
Gain: Through this year's testing work, I laid a solid foundation for the comprehensiveness of my subsequent software development considerations, and at the same time I also gained basic skills in software development. Since this is a large testing company, the organizational framework is very solid, and it has also accumulated a wealth of experience for me as a CTO to lead the testing team.
Small test: transfer to JAVA development engineer
Get the R&D OFFER: Because I want to do R&D, I tested it for a year and a half. Start interviewing R&D while working. Later, I took a research and development offer from a listed company, which is doing all-in-one card business. After I joined the company, I found that the elderly group of this company was almost finished. My direct leader was the manager of our business department. I graduated from a prestigious university and stayed in a listed company. The interview skills were good. The leader directly appointed me as a temporary group. Long. I thought in my heart that when I was just doing R&D, I took the position of team leader, and the pressure suddenly increased.
R&D team leader: The next step is to work hard on my shortcomings in private. I haven't slept before 12 o'clock in the evening, which is very stressful. But my characteristic is that I will attach great importance to everything that the leader entrusts me to complete well, and treat every small matter as a major event, and gradually the leader trusts me more. About half a year later, I was able to do business and technology with ease, and the leader officially appointed me as the team leader. Leading a JAVA R&D team of 3 people, responsible for the code reconstruction of the old business of the all-in-one card and the realization of new requirements. During the period, there were also various business trips and various resident sites, which was also very hard.
Project manager: In another year, there is a new bus APP project, and the leaders met and said that I should be the project manager of this project. At this time, the burden in my heart is even greater. I have never done a project manager before. This is not just responsible for R&D related content like the R&D team leader. The project manager needs to control the overall situation. It needs to compile summary requirements and detailed requirements by himself, control the quality of the prd output by the product manager, control the research and development technical framework, time, delivery, control the test time, and go online. This appointment kept me from going to bed early for N nights, but fortunately I persisted. In the end, it took 7 months to launch all the functions of the APP.
Gain: Through the two years of development experience, first of all, I have improved the technology of research and development by a large margin, basically reaching the skills of middle and senior engineers. Secondly, I had lingering fears at the beginning of leading the team, and after two months of leading the team, I felt very confident in my heart. This has also built up my confidence in the follow-up team and accumulated a certain amount of management experience.
Getting better: Technical leader of a small company
Later, my younger brother found me and wanted to take me to start a business. He is a very business-minded guy who studied finance at a double top university. The university has always been entrepreneurial and has won awards in many entrepreneurial competitions. He found me because he wanted to do an Internet Chinese medicine project, but he lacked technical talents and was able to give a certain share and good salary. After a complicated inner struggle, he finally chose to join the technical partner.
Team formation: Since small companies have limited funds, each position has the least number of personnel. I am responsible for product design, technology selection, technical framework construction, and progress control (equivalent to one person being a product manager, project manager, and R&D manager). Recruit one Android and ios development engineer, one java development engineer, and one test engineer. There are 5 people in total. Although the sparrow is small and has all five internal organs, it covers the full position of product manager, project manager, R&D manager, Android, ios development, and testing.
The team disbanded: The next step was team optimization, technology selection, demand analysis and other daily tasks. It took two years to complete this Internet Chinese medicine project. After the completion of the project, the demand has been very small, and the product has been very stable. After communicating with my younger brother, I feel that the technical department has no meaning. At this time, the leader of the previous company came out to start a business and wanted to join the company as a technical partner. The next step is my current job.
Gain: Although the company is relatively small, I played all the roles related to technology in this company. My management ability, team building ability, technical selection and optimization ability have been greatly improved.
Peak moment: CTO of large companies
Team formation: As the company plans for more than 30 projects, the number of technicians is first recruited on the scale of 24 people. Approximate plan: Android: 2 people, ios: 2 people, front-end development engineers: 4 people, java development engineers: 12 people, 4 people for testing. Since there was a certain network foundation before, it only took two weeks to perfect the organizational structure through friend recommendation and social recruitment.
Organizational structure optimization: After the group was formed, I found that my management costs had increased. The management limit of one person is about 6 people, so I need to optimize the team organization structure. Each team appointed a supervisor to assist me in management. Finally, after half a month of personnel sorting, business division, and personnel selection, five supervisors were finally selected. I only manage to the supervisor level.
The organizational structure is optimized again: as the number of projects increases, so does the number of personnel. One year later, our R&D center has grown to 51 people. In this way, the Java R&D team has also expanded horizontally to 4, the APP team has been expanded to 2, the testing department has been expanded to 4, and the operation and maintenance department has been added.
With the problems that followed, there were new problems, and the promotion of R&D personnel became a bottleneck. Because there were only a few supervisors, the promotion of employees reached the bottleneck. It will cause the morale of the R&D personnel to decrease. In this way, I will find a way to appoint two senior engineers in each group to open up the gradient of the team. Sturdiness.
The organizational structure of the
team has changed again: At this point, the team is currently a team of 51 people, and the organizational structure has been very stable. What I am proud of is that in the two years since the establishment of the team, the turnover rate of the R&D center has been zero (the Internet industry generally has a turnover rate of more than 30%).
Finally: The above is my general experience. I will continue to introduce the team's technical selection, personnel optimization, technical solutions and other continuous updates.
