How to build a mature open source project team? Minutes of an interview with Huang Dongxu, co-founder of PingCAP
Introduction: More and more projects adopt remote team collaboration methods. Some open source projects are the best in cross-regional projects. As a rookie of open source projects, see PingCAP CTO reveals how to successfully build an open source project team in this article.
From November 23 to 24, the GIAC Global Internet Architecture Conference will be held in Shanghai. GIAC is a technical architecture conference launched by the high-availability architecture technology community for architects, technical leaders and high-end technical practitioners. This year's GIAC has Intel, Tencent, Alibaba, Baidu, Ant Financial, Huawei, HKUST Xunfei, Sina Weibo, JD, Qiniu, Meituan Dianping, Are you hungry, Caiyun, Geling Shentong, Databricks Waiting for company experts to attend. Buy this week to enjoy a 12% discount on tickets, and as low as 40% for members of the high-availability structure.
On the eve of the conference, High Availability Architecture interviewed Huang Dongxu, the producer of the 2018 GIAC team management sub-forum, and conducted interviews on team management issues that are of widespread concern to everyone.
Huang Dongxu, distributed system expert, architect, and open source software author. Co-founder and CTO of PingCAP, the main author of well-known open source projects Codis / TiDB / TiKV, worked at Microsoft Research Asia, NetEase Youdao and Pea Pod. He started his business in 2015 and established PingCAP, dedicated to the research and development of the next generation of open source distributed databases. He is good at designing and implementing distributed storage systems, and designing high-concurrency back-end architecture.
High-availability architecture: I am very glad to interview you. Can you briefly introduce yourself?
Huang Dongxu: Huang Dongxu, co-founder and CTO of PingCAP, designer and engineer of TiDB, engaged in the research and development of basic software and distributed systems. I started to get in touch with programming and open source at a very young age, like the culture of Silicon Valley, advocating the free software movement and the Hacker spirit, is an open source believer, and developed Codis. I was responsible for distributed storage related work in Pea Pod. About three and a half years ago, I felt that the industry had been lacking a useful open source distributed database and decided to start a business, which is now PingCAP and TiDB.
High-availability architecture: How do you look for talents as an open source project? What kind of resume is more attractive to you? What are the common qualities of those who pass the interview successfully?
Huang Dongxu: As an open source project, it has a strong push for personal influence and industry influence. We can find many outstanding talents in the open source community.
It’s a bit counter-intuitive that we rarely look at resumes and backgrounds for talents in the community. Technology is borderless. Excellent technical talents have some idealistic feelings to transform the world. We will not limit outstanding talents by resumes. , We are more willing to gather friends with strong technical capabilities and common ideals through the charm of open source.
Now some of our engineers are TiDB code contributors before joining us, or engineers and DBAs who have already participated in the operation and maintenance and use of TiDB in the company before, I think they are the most passionate about TiDB and recognition of open source. Common characteristics of our engineers. I think the best resume is to prove that you can work with the team in the community, this is enough.
High-availability architecture: Based on your years of management experience, how to find outstanding talents? How to give him the opportunity to grow quickly?
Huang Dongxu: Open source projects can be accessed through GitHub and open source communities. There are many platforms now, such as various WeChat groups, offline meetups, etc. You can always find out more by communicating and chatting. On the other hand, by hosting high-quality activities and creating excellent ones The content of technical dry goods and the enhancement of technical brand building can also attract many outstanding talents.
Our talent training is divided into external and internal. In fact, many companies neglect the cultivation of external talents. For an open source project like ours, we need to do some extra work to make engineers interested in TiDB suitable for us. This is why we are writing TiDB source code analysis. , Explaining some of the core algorithms and architecture of TiDB through multiple blogs, hoping to let more people know us, and we also launched TiDB training for enterprises this year, which is a very important part of the ecology. On the other hand, in addition to the internal engineers learning what I just said above, we will also take the initiative to let young people take charge of some modules independently, and old drivers will assist them. Our culture believes in young people and gives them to smart ones. The space for young people to try and make mistakes, while giving full trust, early assistance to experienced drivers, is the key to rapid growth. This is actually determined by the characteristics of our project. Until now, many algorithms and designs of TiDB have basically no ready-made projects and implementations for reference. There is no man’s land ahead, and we can only move forward through bold innovation.
High-availability architecture: Community activities such as PingCAP meetup are well-organized. As one of them, you must have a deeper experience. Can you briefly chat with us? Does the general technical team do some technical branding activities, especially if it has nothing to do with the industry?
Huang Dongxu: Our TiDB open source community continues to hold various offline technology exchange Meetups (Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Guangzhou, Chengdu, Shenzhen, Silicon Valley), community developers' event (TechDay/DevCon), QCon/Percona Live/VLDB /Spark Summit and other industry conference talk exchanges. At present, the TiDB community has successfully initiated and held many open source activities for community users, including 79 offline Meetups, explanations of the source code series, and carefully designed participation paths for technical enthusiasts in different communities.
These technology sharing and interactions have been enthusiastically participated by technology enthusiasts all over the world. Every new feature/new version has a large number of enthusiastic core community users who spontaneously test it. Every day, a large number of global technology enthusiasts give TiDB various suggestions. Product improvement suggestions, report problems.
At the same time, I also like to do technology sharing. Various technology-related activities and salons can communicate with many outstanding technicians through technology brand activities. I will meet many new friends and continue to promote the update and iteration of the project. I hope to create communities and meetups in China that really care about the technology itself.
High-availability architecture: Many domestic companies like to use KPIs to consider employees. As an open source project, what are your differences in employee goal setting, and how do you evaluate employee performance?
Huang Dongxu: The new distributed database field needs more innovative cutting-edge technology research and breakthroughs. The traditional corporate organization and management methods focus on the implementation level and cannot fully stimulate everyone’s sense of innovation. It is necessary to find a more efficient way to release the passion of engineers . We don’t use KPIs to consider employees, but use OKRs. The core key is that all team members from top to bottom need to be able to understand the company’s big goals, rather than simply working to complete KPIs, because KPIs cannot be comprehensive. OKRs The assessment method can better measure whether the daily work matches the company’s strategic direction.
Relying on the open source culture for internal management, for example, the open source culture has low dependence on working time and location, and the project is mainly promoted through online collaboration. Judging from PingCAP's three-year practice, this open source online collaboration method has worked very well, with very high employee satisfaction and efficiency, and the total number of voluntary resignations remains in single digits throughout the year.
High-availability architecture: Looking back, did you feel confused when you were growing up? Especially when you were still unknown, how did you calm down? In what areas have you worked hard? Can you give some suggestions for some impetuous phenomena in the industry?
Huang Dongxu: For engineers, the accumulation and thinking of their own technical capabilities is what I think is the most important thing. I also hope that continuous study and research can be at the forefront of technology. I still maintain the habit of reading academic papers. Even as a technology manager, you must maintain a keen sense of new technology.
In fact, it is not difficult to do this. Ask yourself every day if you have learned something new or have a new understanding of what you already know.
In addition, continuous sharing is also a good way to keep yourself growing. External sharing will force you to summarize and organize the content you want to share. In this process, you will have a deeper understanding of the content.
High-availability architecture: What is your message for this GIAC?
Huang Dongxu: As an old friend of GIAC, I hope that GIAC will continue to use its expertise to bring more sharing and gains to Internet technicians.
The GIAC Global Internet Architecture Conference will be held on November 23-24 at the Renaissance Shanghai Pudong Hotel. Teacher Huang Dongxu will attend as the producer and lecturer.
GIAC is a technical architecture conference jointly launched by msup and the high-availability architecture technology community for architects, technical leaders and high-end technical practitioners. The conference brings together the chief architects and technical CTOs of first-line Internet companies to share their most worthwhile summaries and practical enlightenments of the year. Practitioners can quickly synchronize with the industry’s hot and cutting-edge core technologies to help companies upgrade their business and Successful transformation.
The conference has 5 major sectors, 20 technical topics, and 70 Internet architecture cases. This GIAC has identified Intel, Tencent, Alibaba, Ant Financial, Baidu, Huawei, iFlytek, Sina Weibo, JD, Qiniu, Meituan Dianping, Are you hungry, Caiyun, Geling Shentong, Experts from Databricks and other companies attended.
In the team management session of Teacher Huang Dongxu, the exciting topics are as follows:
For more special topics, please click "Read the original" to view. The conference is in full swing. Register now to enjoy a 12% discount. Come sign up and join us!