introduction
As the saying goes, "There is heaven above, and Suzhou and Hangzhou below." As a famous ancient city with thousands of years of history, Suzhou has a different rhythm of life from first-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. The Internet industry is also booming in this city. Here, there is a representative figure of Suzhou Internet in the circle: Mr. Wang Xiaobo, CTO of Tongcheng Travel Business Group, Tencent Cloud TVP, why he chose Suzhou, and how he practiced "inner strength and mental method" here, from a super programmer To a technical manager who leads a team of tens of thousands of people, and evolve into a "technical hero"? In this issue of technical pointers, let us follow in the footsteps of Mr. Wang Xiaobo and see how a technical hero is made.
Meet heroes for the first time: Choose Suzhou and open up new worlds
Teacher Wang Xiaobo successively worked in first-tier cities such as Beijing, Shenzhen, and Tokyo, Japan, and finally chose to settle in Suzhou. In addition to the hometown feelings as a Suzhou native, it is also because of the connection with the same journey - joining the same journey, "When you come, you will be Messi". From the job transformation from the technical team to the business team, how does this "Messi" always maintain a sense of business in the process of taking the ball, and let Mr. Wang Xiaobo tell us:
In my opinion, Suzhou, my hometown, has a ray of vitality and a culture of more than 2,000 years. Here, there are many opportunities to help us realize our dreams. I came back to Suzhou in August 2014 to join Tongcheng Travel. Before that, I also stayed in several cities in Beijing, Shenzhen, and Tokyo, mainly engaged in Internet-related technology research and development. After joining Tongcheng, I mainly worked on the entire technical architecture of Tongcheng at the beginning, including operation and maintenance, middleware, computer room, and hybrid cloud. I experienced a change of guard in the middle and transferred to the business team to do research and development. Now I lead the entire travel The technical research and development team, so from the basic structure to the business structure, and then to the business application, it is involved in various fields.
In fact, when I first returned to Suzhou, my initial thought was to find a suitable place, and I joined Tongcheng by chance. During the communication, I learned that Tongcheng was in an explosive growth cycle at that time, and the entire infrastructure of Tongcheng began to be restructured, and it truly became the current Internet infrastructure. This means that I can build an Internet company with a relatively good scale and traffic from scratch, which is very attractive to me.
Because many times in established companies, technicians can only be "screws", or in a certain specialized area. I like to play football in my spare time. I use football as a metaphor. After coming here, I am "Messi". He has all the right to fire, command the midfield and defend. For a technical person, your ability is determined by Unlimited expansion, there is enough space and platform for you to flex your muscles. Not every team is without Messi, but if there is no Messi here, then we can be Messi.
In the eyes of many people, Mr. Wang Xiaobo should choose to go deep into technical fields such as cloud or middleware, but he chose to engage in the research and development of business-related systems. Persistence in the concept of "a keen sense of smell":
In my opinion, one of the problems that every company must encounter is that when the company gradually grows in size, technological development will be a circular circle: when the company was first established, everyone worked together one thing. As the team expands and the business increases, the team will start to stratify. For example, some people will work in the computer room, some will work in the cloud, and some will focus on business realization. These departments will become a closed state. I can't feel the information and feeling of the front-end business itself.
When our technical architecture team starts to stay away from the business, and even can't smell the business, then no matter how much technical architecture he does, what is the difference between the technical architecture purchased on the market? If there is no difference, then technological competitiveness will decline at this time. So I think we need to think more about how to let the technical team smell the business. Today’s common methods such as KPI binding or business visits cannot fundamentally solve the problem, because the team has not participated in the business itself. Only by actually participating in the business can we feel and understand what we need It is supported by the technical foundation, which is why I choose to be the business CTO.
Xia Nei Gong: "Don't write weekly reports", build a technology-driven team
After becoming a business CTO, building a "technology-driven" efficient team is the first thing Mr. Wang Xiaobo does. What's more worth mentioning is that when many technical teams are facing the hardships of daily and weekly reports and are worried about the pressure of cost reduction and efficiency increase, Mr. Wang Xiaobo clearly pointed out that "engineers should not become PPT engineers" and "blindly emphasizing cost reduction and efficiency increase is easy to go astray. ". How do technical heroes develop their internal management skills? Teacher Wang Xiaobo will explain to us one by one:
After taking over the business, the first thing I did was to get through the technology of the team, so that the technical ability of the business monetization team surpassed that of the technical architecture team, because the level of technical ability determines the efficiency, and also determines the use of technology to drive business. ability. Therefore, first of all, we need to improve the technical capabilities of the team, and at the same time, we must do a good job in driving technology.
In many technical teams that serve the business, technology often becomes a support department, that is, you do what others say. In my opinion, technology-driven means that when a problem is raised, the technical thinking of the participants in the solution is strong enough. When our operation students put forward an operation idea or confusion, the next discussion topic is not to directly turn it into a After developing a certain cooperation or a certain product idea, and finally cutting it into small pieces, it will be passed to the R&D personnel to say "you can code the code". In this case, the technical students did not see the original demand, so the technical taste in this solution is weak, but more of the process flavor. And if it is possible to receive the front-line information in the first time, and the ideas of the R&D personnel can be correctly reflected, then whether it is a product manager or an operation personnel, they can hear the real "information on the computer" in the first time. idea".
To sum up, we need to make the team a technology-driven rather than a demand-driven team, and use a better understanding of business and products to make the whole team move forward in a formation, so that the most front-line commitments can be delivered No distortion at the end.
At present, writing daily and weekly reports has become a daily task for many technical teams, but in the team of Mr. Wang Xiaobo, he clearly stated that he does not want his team to write these materials every day. Why does he not recommend that the technical team write daily and weekly reports? What kind of management method should a technical team with hundreds or even thousands of people adopt?
First of all, I think that, in essence, a group like programmers does not need management. What they need more is to work together effectively, and management on this basis is effective. If you have to report today, make materials tomorrow, and write OKRs the day after tomorrow, when these things are on everyone, can you imagine that this team is an engineer? There is no doubt that it can only be called a "PPT engineer".
So in my team, I don't want them to be trapped in daily reports and weekly reports. We can see that these materials are all in the same state: emphasizing performance and ignoring problems, writing small things big, and their own A lot of credit, and then there will be some trivial problems according to the requirements. Then it is conceivable that if a team of hundreds of people relies on such materials to report layer by layer, then the manager's management of the team must be distorted, and the team will create the work he needs for this material. Therefore, my management method is very simple - to work with them, take root in the front line to integrate with them, in fact, we can find some team problems from many details. Secondly, the subordinate Leader at each level must report his real work status, conveying such a concept: No matter how many problems there are, it is still excellent. If you do not show the real work situation, no matter how good you are, there will be pitfalls. . When this concept is implanted layer by layer, each layer will give you a very good display.
Cost reduction and efficiency increase is a hot topic in various companies nowadays. Does the technical team also need to reduce costs and increase efficiency? As a manager, how to drive the team to reduce costs and increase efficiency, and let Mr. Wang Xiaobo share his insights and considerations with us.
It is our most current idea to enable technology to empower more businesses and to enable digital technology to improve business efficiency. Maybe all companies want to reduce costs and increase efficiency, but the most intuitive phenomenon for a R&D team to reduce costs and increase efficiency is to reduce R&D costs. Does this matter itself really achieve cost reduction and efficiency increase? There is a problem of explicit cost and hidden cost here. Maybe the company reduces a small explicit cost, but increases a large hidden cost. Therefore, in my opinion, the R&D team is right to talk about cost reduction and efficiency increase in essence, but it is easy to go astray if only emphasizing cost reduction and efficiency increase. Since information technology itself increases efficiency and is used to improve the operating efficiency of the company, the existence of the technical team is to increase efficiency. While increasing efficiency, it will naturally reduce costs.
Before being a technical manager, I was also a "super programmer". The source of this name is firstly because I write a lot of code, and the output is particularly large; in addition, there are almost no systems that I cannot save. In the case of a problem, I can usually find it and solve it. In my opinion, the training of programmers is exactly the same as the training of pilots. There used to be a saying that "pilots are made of gold". In fact, the same is true for programmers. Good programmers themselves are raised by failures. Those failed projects in your work experience are actually just for you. Create opportunities for growth. In addition, deep digging at certain points is not necessarily the repetition of zeros and ones in the work, but when you spend your own time and energy on the research of something, it determines when these special events happen, Can you save it.
The practice of chivalry: catch the crisis and build a safe and reliable infrastructure
In 2019, the new crown pneumonia epidemic swept the world. During this period, this "technical hero" not only led the team to launch the 98 yuan ticket blind box that was snapped up by more than 10 million people, and survived the crisis; but also actively deployed with the help of Tencent Cloud Build cloud infrastructure to promote the same journey to go further. Let's follow in the footsteps of Teacher Wang Xiaobo and see his hero's way of cultivation:
At that time, we launched the blind box of the same journey ticket online, which attracted more than 20 million users to participate in the panic buying. Due to too many visits, the server was overloaded. The classmate came back to start work again, and started to redo it at about 12 o'clock in the morning, and released it the next morning. Since the release of this version, it has not been changed, which undoubtedly has great difficulties and challenges.
When the old system has been stuck under the existing traffic, how much should our estimated new traffic be, ten times or a hundred times? The grasp of this point depends on your past experience and rescue ability. In addition, it is also necessary to quickly wake up the team on the eve of vacation and complete the refactoring quickly, which also challenges the organizational capabilities and technical unity of our entire team.
Because we use Tencent Cloud, many elastic computing capabilities can be supported by Tencent Cloud. For example, in the case of blind boxes for air tickets, flexibility is needed at the moment when users rush to buy. In fact, Tencent Cloud can quickly realize the expansion of computing resources. At the same time, these resources can be released after the snap-up is over, so Serverless is also used.
As an application with a large number of users, Tongcheng Travel is very necessary to build a safe and reliable infrastructure. Behind this, Tencent Cloud also provides a solid and reliable backing for Tongcheng.
As early as 2015, we cooperated with Tencent Cloud, mainly in infrastructure construction. We first chose Tencent Cloud to access the network. Facing the access of users from all over the country, our network needs to be well protected. And Tencent has network nodes spread across the country, as well as strong intranet connectivity capabilities, which can ensure security while achieving speed, and effectively improve user experience. Moreover, the cost of self-built network itself is very high, which means that not every enterprise is suitable for it, so it will be faster and more convenient to borrow Tencent's network at this time, and because Tencent's main business WeChat and QQ are also running on the same On the network, it can provide us with consistent security guarantees.
When we need to expand capacity, using cloud resources to expand capacity has obvious cost advantages. We also use Tencent Cloud's security products and computing products a lot, and we are constantly introducing some open source products. Considering the cost of the infrastructure, the reliability of the infrastructure, and the long-term guarantee capability of the infrastructure, we have cooperated with Tencent Cloud in many aspects of the infrastructure, including the middleware part, the security system part, involving IaaS, PaaS, etc.
Our cooperation will have more user perception in the WeChat applet, including Tencent payment, and we will work with Tencent to maintain user security. At the same time, we will use Tencent's risk control big data capabilities and security products to do reinforcement, such as Our user behavior risk control in the background, in fact, Tencent Cloud has also done a good algorithm output. So what users can really feel is that our user system and payment in the mini program are equated with Tencent's security.
For Tencent Cloud, which focuses on cloud infrastructure, our cooperation will definitely be closer and deeper in the future. As more new infrastructures of Tencent Cloud appear in the future, we will continue to try and experience them.
The essence of chivalry: to benefit the world, insist on technology for good
The greatness of chivalry lies not only in technical strength, but also in the chivalrous feelings of helping the world. Teacher Wang Xiaobo in daily life is not only good at observing the people around him, but also has an understanding and open-mindedness from those who have experienced the younger generation. Regarding the mission of technicians, he frankly said that he should regard himself as a craftsman and maintain the recognition of technology Ability, only by insisting on technology for good can we gallop in this "river and lake".
A technical hero and a technical leader, he also cares for his colleagues and subordinates in his work and life. In the face of the crisis of the epidemic, his comfort and consolation are just small gestures, but they are enough to warm people's hearts.
What was the intuitive impact of the past epidemics on us at that time? It was a temporary interruption of work, and it was likely to be a large-scale interruption. For example, one of our teams at the time encountered the dilemma that different colleagues were blocked in different communities. At that time, the first thing we did was not to arrange work, but to care about everyone's life and emotions. One of our leaders wrote a diary based on his experience, and shared with team members in detail what should be paid attention to and what to prepare at home. When this diary based on his personal experience was shared, many students felt very warm, and their anxiety and anxiety eased a lot. In fact, at this time, the problem of treating people is reflected. Only by being good at understanding the people around you and solving the life problems of team members can we do better in team work.
The demeanor of a hero is more than just caring for those around him. In fact, he is also good at empathizing with the "back waves".
There are also many "back waves" of the younger generation around me. Although each generation has different anxieties, as the pace of society accelerates, we can feel that the anxiety of young people is getting stronger. How can we address anxiety among young people? I don't think it is to warn young people not to be anxious, because in fact, we look at this generation of young people from the perspective of our own growth, just like a river, we crossed from the west bank of the river to the east bank of the river, and then we Then look at the other side of the river and say, "It's so hard, how can this river be crossed?" But in fact, we have forgotten the feeling when we crossed the river when we were young.
In my opinion, optimism may be a good solution. At this stage of youth, facing the current social pressure, there will be periods of anxiety and rebellion, but you should also have the fighting spirit when you were young, and face existing problems with an optimistic and open-minded attitude. When you are in the world, you will be happier.
Programmers, as technicians, are essentially craftsmen like chefs and carpenters. Our mission is to make technology better, so that users can use it more conveniently. In today's digital society, an information system can act on the welfare of society, or on the opposite side. I think programmers should have their own judgment and recognition ability, and stick to the original intention of technology for good.
epilogue
Brew a pot of tea and stroll along the promenade of the ancient streets in Suzhou. A technical hero hidden in the city is waving to you, inviting you to enjoy the thousand-year-old ancient capital with the warmth of spring and flowers, and talk about the original intention and feelings of technology for good. Under the afterglow, the thoughts are long, Xia is the persistence of technology for good, doing something, and not doing something. A hero is a kind of responsibility to hide in a city and protect the side and the distance. TVP Technology Pointer will continue to work with you to explore the truth of technology.