Career development is a subject that each of us cannot avoid. Recently, the Didi Technology video account and the Mactalk video account have planned a live broadcast on related topics. The live broadcast revolves around topics such as "career planning, technical insights, work review, and teamwork". Now some of the content is organized as follows.
Guest information:
Ma Guannan: The current person in charge of quality and efficiency and chief engineer of Didi's online car-hailing service.
Shi Haifeng: Author of the public account "IT Migrant Workers Gossip", Chairman of CCF TF Digital Transformation and Enterprise Architecture SIG.
Q: What is the anchor point when you are doing career planning? When will you consider changing jobs, and what is the logic of changing jobs?
Shi Haifeng : Frankly speaking, when I first started working, I didn’t have any career plans, or I took it for granted that I would always be in this profession. After working for many years, career planning has also been integrated into the usual work. As for the anchor point of planning, I have only one: whether it is management or technical ability, it must be able to grow continuously.
Management and technology are not opposed. Many people have misunderstood the relationship between the two, thinking that after doing management work, technical ability will be abandoned, or technical personnel are not suitable for management. In fact, technology and management are interlinked in some respects. Compared with other types of work, technical people have less contact with other people, and technical people use technical or engineering thinking to look at interpersonal relationships, coordination issues between organizations, etc., such as decoupling, cohesion, how to improve Efficiency, etc., are all interlinked.
Management is not about thinking about people every day, and doing a good job in technology also requires improving soft skills, especially the relationship with people. We often hear such an argument that when your career develops to a certain stage, there are bound to be two choices, one is to continue to do technology, and the other is to do management. In my opinion, this question is whether to assume management responsibilities on the basis of retaining technical capabilities.
It is undeniable that management ability is very important. Whether the team can lead well and produce results depends largely on the leader of the team. Whether you want to be the leader of the team is the result of the comprehensive effect of many factors, such as your overall quality is relatively strong, the leader thinks you can and you have the willingness to be a leader, etc. The management mentioned here does not mean pure management. In my opinion, at least at the director level, it is possible to break away from front-line tasks. For most front-line leaders, they must be the most important technical core of the team.
Regarding when to consider changing jobs, the most important factor is growth. Taking myself as an example, the reason why I chose to leave Dangdang and join Ele.me is because Ele.me has an order volume of 10 million+, a technical team of thousands of people, and more space both horizontally and vertically.
After a few years in a company, there is a high probability that you will be able to realize the limitations of your own development. If the outside world has a suitable opportunity to go further, it is the best time to change jobs. But I am a little more persistent, that is, I must make achievements before considering changing jobs, and achieving achievements is a long-term process.
Ma Guannan: What I want to talk about is very similar to Haifeng. Our careers can basically be divided into three stages: the initial stage of career, the stage of rapid growth, the bottleneck stage and the breakthrough stage. In the first three to five years of entering the workplace, most people are basically in a relatively confused stage. At the same time, this stage is also a stage of rapid learning and rapid growth. Take technical students as an example. At this stage, it is necessary to improve technical proficiency, do some training consciously, and communicate with classmates or seniors around you when you encounter problems. At the same time, I also give two suggestions to students at this stage, don't be greedy for too much, and don't try too much.
In the rapid growth period, it should be an "inverted T shape". Don't think about how to quickly expand horizontally, but choose a field for deep cultivation, and try your best to become someone who is difficult or irreplaceable in your field. A lot of knowledge or technology is interlinked, and the experience we have accumulated in a certain field can be transferred to other fields.
During the bottleneck and breakthrough period, you must do three things. One is to find out which fields are attractive to you, where your interests or passions are; the second is to exercise your ability to find the underlying reasons; the third is to continuously expand your horizons , such as reading books or attending industry exchange meetings.
Q: Did you take any detours? What suggestions can give you?
Shi Haifeng: I understand that "detour" means regret, and I haven't reached the moment of regret yet, so it's hard to judge whether I have taken a detour. If I have to say, I have worked in telecommunications software for 11 years after graduation, but at that time in the traditional software industry, we did not pursue new technologies, but sought stability, controllability, and solutions to problems, which required basic skills. Be solid and tough. Many things are interlinked. When new opportunities arise, if the basic skills are strong, the experience can be quickly transferred to the new opportunities, and you may be able to meet the next opportunity.
Therefore, it is hard to say that I took a detour during my time in a traditional software company. At least I have accumulated my own abilities and laid a good foundation. If you want to give advice to students, there are three aspects:
The first point, whether it is an inverted T-shaped talent like Guannan said, or a π-shaped talent or an I-shaped talent, in the two dimensions of horizontal and vertical, at least one dimension must have a higher level of ability than the horizontal line.
The second point is that when dealing with people for a long time, we only judge heroes by success or failure. To put it bluntly, within a company, the comparison is not whose ability is high or low, but who can complete the project.
The third point is to do self-precipitation and summary on a regular basis.
Ma Guannan: I did experience a "detour" for a period of time. At that time, I was working in a distributed related field, and I would read some Memcached and Redis related codes and source code analysis, many of which were related to memory application, allocation, and optimization. In order to see it more clearly, I spent a long time looking at technologies related to Kernel memory management, but my own work is not so strongly related to Kernel.
Why do you do this? At that time, whether it was a forum or a community, everyone was interpreting Kernel-related technologies, so I felt that I should also learn. However, we know that when learning some knowledge that is not strongly related to our field, the knowledge is difficult to master, and it is very easy to forget. Therefore, after about two or three months, I forgot all the knowledge related to memory optimization and management.
Fortunately, after being taught by the seniors, I quickly adjusted my learning ideas. This is why I mentioned the "inverted T-shaped" career development path. In the early stage of career development, it is more important to choose a field for deep cultivation, like digging a well, and then consider horizontal expansion.
If I were to give you some advice, first, be self-driven. We often say that interest is the best teacher, but when you are interested and curious, you still have to rely on self-drive and moderate challenge settings to deal with the boring skill learning and repetitive training process; second, there must be a win-win situation thinking . In many cases, engineers pursue idealism too much, and do not consider environmental constraints and the demands of partners, which may eventually make the project unable to be completed smoothly; the third rule is to do precipitation and review regularly .
Shi Haifeng: By the way, I would like to add, in fact, when you are young, you will always learn some things that you will not use in the future, which is normal. Before we have formed our own unique competitive advantage or have not selected a field, we must diverge. Only through continuous trial and error can you discover what you are good at and what you are interested in, and then find your own differentiated advantages, so that you can have what others have and what others have. So from this dimension, I don't think this is a detour.
Q: Guannan mentioned the Kernel craze. Last year it was the metaverse, and this year it was the big model. As engineers, we all have situations of missing information anxiety. Will the two have information anxiety? Faced with the oncoming information, should the two study in depth or look far away?
Shi Haifeng: To be honest, there is so much information that I can’t understand it now. For large models, I read the news every day for a while, but I am more concerned about what applications have been released and which scenarios are actually applied. As for which company has open sourced which project and how many parameters there are in the big model, I will selectively ignore it. I don't have so much technology related to myself, it is enough to understand the principle, and more to see the scene.
Ma Guannan: I am not very anxious about technical information. One is that new technologies will emerge every once in a while these years, and I have seen more; the other is that the focus is more on whether it can be combined with work matters, such as which can improve work efficiency, such as the recent large Model. For a technology, I will first understand and be familiar with its application, understand its principles as much as possible, and finally look at and perceive it, and try to make some judgments on technological development trends. At present, I am doing quality and efficiency related matters in Didi, mainly relying on DevOps methodology to do things. Large models can assist us in making human-like decision-making or strategy execution and generation related matters on the basis of data accumulation and precipitation. This part is the visible future.
Q: Just now we all talked about replays and summaries. This ability or habit is very important. How do you usually perform recovery?
Ma Guannan: I will do replays according to the frequency of events. In general, I will do two types of work review and personal review.
For work review, I will sort things according to the size of the matter. For example, for departmental goals that will affect the annual work focus, I will basically review on a quarterly basis. All the people gathered together. For some medium and long-term things to be done, it may not be directly related to departmental goals, but may be related to engineering soil and engineering habits. I will do monthly review of such things, but basically every two weeks I will use Use a mind map to see the current state of affairs.
The other part is to manage the recovery. Because there is a lot of management work to be done now to understand the gradient health status of the team, I will interview the team members to understand the problems they are currently encountering. This will be done more frequently and the time dimension will be longer.
As for my own personal review, it is basically a weekly review. I prefer to write ToDoList. On the way to send my child to kindergarten on Monday morning, I will simply write out the ToDoList for the next week. In addition, for learning things, such as I am now looking at materials related to data processing, the combination of large models and DevOps pipeline processing, whether the learning progress has reached the set goals, etc., basically reviewing on a weekly basis.
In addition, there are some review, or case precipitation and sharing, which I will do periodically. For example, share some articles on full-link stress testing, performance testing, pitfalls, or best practices in technical communities and company intranets. These sharing tends to be done on demand.
Shi Haifeng: Sharing is indeed a good way to force a review . The so-called review is when we have done a certain thing, thinking about what went well and what didn't go well. Some things are within our control and some things are beyond our control. For those that we can control, we can form norms through review and summary, and then implement them within the team or within the company. For things that we cannot control, they will be risks, costs or obstacles. After reviewing, when we encounter similar problems in the future, we can choose to bypass or shelve them.
Work review like Guannan mentioned is very useful. Work review means updating and giving feedback in a timely manner, or in other words, facing the team's problems directly. Of course, this is also related to the company's operating mechanism. Some teams do review during the assessment, and some teams review after the event. Regarding the frequency or granularity of replays, I will not be particularly detailed.
Through the review, we can see how the team performed, what things were done, what things in the ToDoList were delayed, what caused the delay, and so on. Many people think that reviewing is a waste of time. It is true that when many people review the game together, it will be a waste of time if it is too far away, but the review within the controllable range is only beneficial.
Q: When faced with a choice, many people are hesitant, such as between large companies and small companies, traditional enterprises and the Internet industry, startups or public examinations, etc., they are hesitant. When the two of you change jobs or industries, do you have any hidden logic of choice? For example, is it a coincidence, or is it very determined in your heart?
Ma Guannan: I think there are two main points, one is curiosity, and the other is whether it is appropriate. On the career path we choose, we will definitely encounter various problems, such as engineering problems, collaboration problems, and bottleneck periods or burnout periods. If there is not enough curiosity, I think many people will give up halfway. Most students who are truly curious can overcome difficult times with strong beliefs.
If you are engaged in repeating and repeating the previous items every day, without a proper sense of challenge, it will be boring. I am the same. So when there is an opportunity that can satisfy my curiosity and make myself feel a sense of reward, I will unswervingly choose this opportunity. Because if there is no enthusiasm, it will be difficult to persevere when encountering difficulties and long-term suffering. And with a long career, you will definitely encounter such moments. But if curiosity is ignited, difficulties and challenges are a kind of fun.
Whether it is suitable or not is actually a two-way choice and a two-way problem. For example, the quality and efficiency department of Didi, where I am now, is in urgent need of talents in full-link stress testing and performance evaluation . Assuming that a student is very interested in learning about open source projects in this area, and his current job cannot provide him with this part of practice opportunities, then Didi is a very good choice.
Shi Haifeng: I have never been to start-up companies, state-owned enterprises or central enterprises, but I think it is good to find the one that suits you. As for the question of whether to join a large factory or a small factory, whether to start a business or take a public examination, the premise of the question is that you really have the right to make a choice, and then you can consider the question of choosing one of the three.
Is it important to choose or work hard? ——When there is a choice, the choice is important; when there is no choice, hard work is the most important.
Of course, I can also understand the students who ask these questions. They are thinking about opportunities or choosing a direction. However, everyone must not think that joining a traditional industry or a public institution can make a difference. In my values, lying down means being eliminated, so I will not stay in one place with nothing to do until I grow old, I always have to do something. Although now people often say that a certain company or a certain industry is too complicated and want to go to a comfortable place, this kind of idea or practice is not a choice in itself, but a kind of escape.
Q: Following the above question, what kind of people do you two like to work with? Or in the interview process, what kind of classmates do you like? I mainly want to use the two of you to understand how people who are portrayed in the talent market will be favored.
Shi Haifeng: First of all, the overall quality should be good . For young people who are just fledgling, the overall quality is highly related to his academic background. For students who have worked for many years, academic qualifications are not so important.
Secondly, be able to follow the basic principles of technical teamwork and discuss things as they stand . Because the interpersonal relationship of technical people is relatively simple, they can use technology as the starting point to objectively evaluate things in the technical dimension.
Finally, from the perspective of results, people must be down-to-earth and reliable. It’s true that we all hope to find someone who is smart and has potential, but more importantly, we need to be practical and reliable. Being down-to-earth means knowing your strengths, knowing your strengths and weaknesses, knowing where you are going in the future, and being willing to work hard. Reliable means that others are trustworthy and willing to cooperate with them, and the team is willing to let him become the core.
Ma Guannan: This question is particularly relevant, because the team has indeed been recruiting recently and has opened up a number of positions, such as front-end and back-end, small programs, strategy algorithms, test development engineers, etc. Interested students can learn more about it through the next article of this push .
From a company perspective:
We like and welcome people who are pragmatic and professional, think about the combination of technology and the value of business services, and can enter an environment that is very self-driven and continuously evolving as I just said.
If you are interested in the online car-hailing business and the handling of complex problems in large-scale travel scenarios, welcome to the online car-hailing technology line, and even more so to my quality and efficiency department.
From a personal point of view, if a student can show a strong interest in a certain field or a certain technology, and study in-depth and self-driven outside work, I will prefer it. This situation can generally be felt through in-depth interaction and related technical discussions during the interview.
Students who like to cooperate are generally simple and reliable, able to close the loop, and it is best to be able to empathize or have a win-win awareness. But in many cases, we have no right to choose our partners, just like we cannot choose our classmates and colleagues. So in the past few years, I will remind myself to be able to cooperate with various types of people, and try not to presuppose in my heart that I cannot cooperate with any type of people. As long as you find a resonance point, there is room and possibility for collaboration.