As an Internet practitioner, I have often encountered a soul torture over the years, that is, "Why does a website need so many technical personnel?" The homework is to develop a website or app, so why do the companies behind mainstream websites or apps often have tens of thousands of technical teams?".
This article takes the research and development website as an example, and it is also applicable to the research and development of apps. Also, this article explains more about why so many technicians are needed than why so many people are needed .
Let's take a look at the growth path of a typical Internet company.
The initial phase
This stage is often when an idea has just landed, maybe only one or two functions, and there are no users yet. The website design at this time is very simple, with a total of three components, web pages, back-end services, and databases .
The webpage is what you see, the back-end service is to process your various operations on the webpage, and the database, as the name implies, stores data.
For example, if you update your phone number on the web page, the backend service checks whether your phone number is 11 digits and tells the database to save it, and then the database records it.
For such three pieces of content, one web engineer and one back-end engineer can handle it, which is the difficulty of one job. This design can also cope with the very simple functions of the website at the beginning, and this is just the beginning .
growth stage
In this stage, after the launch of the previous stage, some users have been affirmed and some users have grown. Whether it is from user feedback or the judgment of the founder, the website needs to develop some new functions .
At this time, more front-end and back-end R&D engineers are needed to join (webpage engineers are called front-end engineers).
In addition, due to the increase in functions and complexity, it is necessary to recruit some full-time test students. They have a more professional ability to judge whether the website functions meet expectations. Therefore, at this time, the development process will also include a test link, and the test can only be launched. .
Furthermore, due to the increase in functions and the need for more and more servers, it is necessary to recruit operation and maintenance students who specialize in server management. They have more professional capabilities in judging machine performance and improving machine stability.
development stage
At this stage, it is often recognized by the market and has a group of loyal users. The reality shows that there is potential for continued development.
At this time, in terms of website capabilities, it will continue to develop as in the previous stage, but the speed will become faster. In addition to the continuous recruitment of front-end and front-end R&D engineers, testing and machine operation and maintenance can no longer be supported by human flesh. At this time, the company will start using it. Craft some off-the-shelf testing and operations tools, or even start building one yourself. This introduces test tool R&D engineers and system operation and maintenance R&D engineers .
A milestone phenomenon at this time is to slowly explore the direction of automation . After all, the cost of continuous recruitment and inefficient human operations are unsustainable.
In addition, the performance of the database is often the shortest board in the entire design. With the increasing amount of data and visits, it is necessary to introduce specialized database engineers to ensure that the performance of the database can continue to keep up with business development.
outbreak stage
At this stage, a certain market brand is often formed , and the number of users begins to surge. It is difficult for most companies to survive to this stage, which requires the coexistence of strength and opportunity.
With the surge in the number of users, users with malicious intentions also began to approach quietly.
For a hacker, his core goals are nothing more than two points, either to directly obtain the confidential information of the website through vulnerabilities, or to attack your website and make you collapse to blackmail you.
At this time, the website needs to recruit professional security engineers to fight against them. They need to be familiar with the means of attack, sort out the possible security risks of the website, or use or develop their own protection tools. They need to understand various details from hardware to software, from operating system to application system, and they are a group of people with very solid technical skills.
Math stage
The digital intelligence stage refers to the start of analyzing the large amount of data left by users on the platform, so as to provide personalized services.
If you like sports, it will push you various sports articles or fitness products, and when you have just given birth, it will push you various parenting articles and maternal and child products. Age x region x gender x hobbies x personality x background, this series of dimensions can profoundly describe a specific person.
In addition, reports of various dimensions need to be produced for executive decision-making, financial analysis, market research, etc.
At this time, the company will recruit a lot of " data R & D engineers " and " algorithm engineers ".
In fact, after the company begins to move towards digital intelligence, it is far from enough to just recruit students with these two roles, but also to build a series of technical capabilities. Data modeling and analysis is a big science. A company's data team is often a first-level department. Even in companies in some industries, the data department accounts for more than 50%.
In this way, you can understand why you hear so many social topics about data, such as "big data era", "data privacy" and so on.
Data analysis was only an auxiliary function many years ago, but now it has become the eyes of the enterprise, so it requires the investment of many people and resources.
Self-research stage
The self-research stage means that the company starts to develop various basic systems by itself.
You may be wondering, don’t the construction of various functions mentioned above refer to self-developed? This will expand and talk about the relationship between "use" and "build" in the development process of a company.
In the early days of the company, in order to verify whether the direction itself has enough value, except for back-end services and web pages, basically all the technologies and tools that were available at that time were used.
This is because timing is everything , and the key is to quickly seize market opportunities and then expand your influence to gain a firm foothold. In addition, there is not too much funds to go deep into technical details for research and development, and the salary level and company influence that can be provided cannot attract very senior technical personnel to join.
But as the company gradually grows, many of these out-of-the-box products are no longer suitable. Several very important reasons include:
- Security : Public technologies or tools can be researched by everyone, and they can not only research and develop together, but also study the loopholes in them together.
- Features : The company may have its own characteristics, which cannot be met by public technologies or tools. For example, the company is characterized by a very large amount of data or very demanding performance requirements.
- Cost : Public technologies and tools are also divided into free and paid. Of course, paid things are easy to use, but when the scale of use expands, the cost also increases sharply. Here I would like to mention various Internet video companies, including but not limited to Youku, iQiyi, Tencent Video and so on. The reason why these companies seem to charge various membership fees ruthlessly is behind the high cost of storing and transmitting these contents. Even though many services and facilities (from software to hardware) have been self-developed, the cost is still terribly high. In addition, the number of films is increasing, the resolution is getting higher and higher, and the cost is doubling.
At this time, the company will recruit a large number of technical personnel for different self-developed products . Don't underestimate the size of these members. Every public product on the market is actually enough to support a company. If you want to develop multiple public products yourself, you need to recruit a lot of technical personnel.
Research stage
The era of scientific research refers to the time when companies start to invest resources in scientific research. These contents may be the current hot technical topics and research fields, or they may be some eternal topics in the computer field.
For example, today's hot topics may include artificial intelligence, virtual reality, driverless technology, etc. The eternal themes include continuous performance improvement, cost-effective storage solution, security attack and defense, etc.
The company has entered the scientific research stage, which is a milestone. This means that the company needs to lead the industry forward, and it is the first person in the entire climbing team. The company has opened up a piece of soil for scientific researchers and even scientists with ideals and technical beliefs, allowing them to try and make mistakes, improve, blossom, and bear fruit.
stage summary
This is basically the path of technological development of an Internet company.
The main line can be simply summarized as: problems are caused by scale, and progress is driven by problems. So we often say that scale determines productivity. When a website serves one or two users, one or two technical students are indeed enough, but if a company wants to serve hundreds of millions of people and hopes to survive, it needs enough people and resources to support it.
If the increase in the size of the technical team brought about by the company's development is called vertical development, what is horizontal expansion?
horizontal management
In terms of vertical development, there are various stages mentioned above. Different roles need to be introduced to solve the problems encountered in different stages. When introducing these roles, the title of "engineer" is used to describe them. What I want to express more is the need to recruit Those who solve the current problems at that time.
But when the design of the entire website reaches a certain level of complexity, it is not enough to have only those who have landed. At this time, there is a need for a type of person. This type of person has fought on the front line, can see some common problems and contradictions that exist today, and can analyze the reasons Formulate strategies and plans, and promote implementation. This kind of person is actually what we often refer to as an " architect " and a technical manager in a general sense .
We often hear a saying: "Don't just keep your head on the road, but look up the road." Architects are the group of people who look at the road. They continue to consider the severity of the problem, continue to dig out the core contradictions, and plan ahead. In fact, these students have always existed in the organization, and as the company's technology becomes more complex, there will be more and more of them.
other management
Why does a website or the technical team behind an Internet company continue to expand? I believe you can already understand some of it through the above introduction.
To expand on this topic, for an Internet company, the technical team is actually only a part of it, of course, it is a large part, but there are many important roles for the entire company to continue to develop and move forward.
Without them, the company still cannot function. They are also indispensable members behind every web page and every app function that you can see.
end
The development of a company is actually the epitome of the development of an industry. Going to see all kinds of development problems encountered by a company, you will feel that the industry is not easy to move forward and make breakthroughs. The various conveniences and new gadgets we enjoy on the Internet are not gifts from Santa Claus, but the brainchild of many engineers. The development of a company and the development of an industry require the right time, place and people. Success learning cannot help us succeed, but knowing awe and gratitude, we can take every step without complaint or regret.