From Zoommy
If a friend comes from afar, I will treat him to wine. I will treat my best friend with the best wine. If your friends don’t drink, invite them to Starbucks. They drink coffee, they drink tea.
In order to bear this sentence to death, I once set a record of over 1500 yuan for a single coffee order at a technology conference last year.
This is how I treat people.
The money is spent, the heart is hurt, but in everyone’s heart set up a good impression, the value.
Last Thursday night, I got together with two friends who have long been active in silicon Valley’s open source community. Coincidentally, one of them is a CTO at a Silicon Valley startup.
I’m the CTO. Why do you keep asking me for technical details? # was ridiculed by them on the way up.
Friend: I heard that recently you successfully transformed into a net red ah?
I: don’t make, I every day busy of foot dozen back head spoon, do of which door net red……
Friend: pretend to force, you that 10W+ article, even the Silicon Valley is a sensation.
Me: Really? Seems to have struck a deep chord with a lot of people.
After a few drinks, I asked them, “As I wrote in my article, there are many Ctos or directors in the country who don’t write code, and they are debating whether Ctos should write code at all.”
“Do Ctos understand technical details in Silicon Valley?”
That’s a little different, friends say, because there are far more tech companies in Silicon Valley than Internet companies, so most Ctos not only care about technical details, but coding is the most important part of their day job.
He gave me an example of a startup technology company in Silicon Valley, which started with about 50 people but expanded to more than 400 this year, with a technical team of about 120 people. The CTO is an American and his good friend.
He enjoys a hands-on style of work, spending only half an hour a day listening to team members’ reports and giving instructions. Most of the time, he developed algorithms through C/C++ and Java, which can be said to be a major contributor to the project’s technical iterations. In addition, he also helps developers to write patent claims, to help solve technical problems encountered by members.
In addition, he wrote many of the company’s patent claims himself, rather than delegating them to subordinates.
Hearing this, I suddenly remembered an article I read a few years ago.
Basically, in Silicon Valley, rolling up your sleeves and writing code is the norm for Ctos/tech partners/senior tech managers, and there are almost no technical teams at the branch offices. Many tech companies don’t have Ctos, and founders, like many engineers, spend about 60 percent of their day writing code and 40 percent managing and communicating.
Thinking of this, I smiled, looked at my friend and said, “If ctos in Silicon Valley were back in China, they would have been labeled as having problems with the team structure and incomplete echelon construction. At least they would be required to rectify the situation, or at worst they would be dismissed.”
If there is objective forced here, there is subjective helplessness, then what are the reasons?
After drinking wine, making a pot of tea, carving a melon seed, and having some snacks, the three of them started from their own point of view, trying to figure out why.
So left a sentence, right a sentence, which there is no lack of ridicule, also sigh, wake up some messy, I sorted out the next.
In the eyes of friends, there are three main reasons why such a difference exists.
1, domestic heavy scene, the United States heavy technology
It is undeniable that in the long history of the Internet in the past two decades, many Domestic Internet companies represented by BAT have imitated American Internet companies. Based on China’s demographic dividend, much of this round of imitation has thrived, even surpassing the SIZE of the United States.
In addition, the development of the Domestic Internet focuses on the scene, after all, the domestic population base is so large there. But in science and technology innovation basically stays in the stage of extending American technology.
For example, not long ago, the United States imposed export restrictions on Zte, Huawei and other Chinese enterprises, imposing more extensive restrictions on high-tech technologies, CPUS and chips. Although China already has its own CPUS, they are still in the laboratory stage and have not been commercialized on a large scale.
Again, for example, the website is the most basic elements, domain name, domain name is the international domain name is the earliest. Com, this is a limited resource, the somebody else chance company registered in the United States is the largest, is almost 95% above, our country is the most representative of ali cloud, all Internet companies such as new, for these the cybersquatting success rate is only 50% or so, It’s almost impossible to grab, unless it’s a domain name they don’t want.
I don’t mean to belittle myself or elevate others, but to look at the differences between China and the United States in Internet and technology from a correct perspective.
In such an objective environment, domestic technology hot spots from beginning to end are focused on “high concurrency” and “massive data”, strictly speaking, these are scenarios catalyzed by the application scenario solution, rather than the core technology.
So most of the code that you write is designed to deal with this scenario. Of course, you can also dig deep enough, drill enough proficient, but the market does not necessarily need, this thankless environment is put there, as time goes by, you will feel meaningless.
Speaking of this, let me think of the apple Iphone4, product designers in order to reduce the thickness of the phone 1 mm, I do not know how many white hair, but to the Chinese market, just to a mobile phone case, immediately give you 1 cm taller.
2, CTO and VP, silly silly can not distinguish
Taking silicon Valley companies as an example, CTO should be the no.1 technology in the company. He should be sensitive to technology and have profound insights on technology development, and maintain the competitiveness of the company in the industry with his ability. He should keep searching for cutting-edge technologies in his professional field.
In addition, he will investigate side areas that may influence the company’s technical direction.
So what is VP for?
Taking the engineering VP as an example, to put it simply, he should be an outstanding manager and team builder. His specific skills include recruitment, communication, problem solving, etc., to ensure the success of everyone in the engineering team and solve the problems encountered in the process. In addition, ensuring team health, facilitating communication between the technical team and the business, makes engineers’ efforts more valuable and explores more possibilities.
In other words, VP is a technical management position.
However, in many domestic enterprises, CTO is marked as “technology BOSS”, what technical management, what technical problems, all contact you.
After all, we Chinese people are popular with “centralized management”, which will be more efficient, right?
Think about it for a moment. I often see technical managers and architects arguing over technology selection. How do you divide the power between them? Disgusting is, most of the problems are small and medium-sized scenarios, neither principle issues, nor core technology issues, a technical solution, who listen to? See who’s older? Or who has the tougher background?
Forget it, just put the architect under the technical manager and listen to one person.
Think about CTO and VP, is that the same thing?
3. Interest drives you farther and farther from the code
Looking back over the last decade, it seems like every time I started a new company, my actual job was as an architect or senior developer, but I ended up being pulled into a director or VP position.
I remember in a party of great wisdom, the leader drank a few more cups, talking about this matter, he said to me, you have rich technical experience, articulate, can use the most sharp language to make business and technology compatible, this is a kind of ability, you also loaded force?
If people like you don’t manage, who will?
Yes, when I am a director, I have power and power. Under the pressure of KPI, a group of younger brothers will follow me. Whatever you say, there will be others who will follow me. And the salary, year-end bonus, is almost always much higher than that of an architect or senior developer.
I often say that a lot of programmers choose to do this in the first place either because they love games or because they are curious about electronic information.
The idea is very simple, is to want to be a happy programmer, through their own efforts, become a not only understand the principle, but also understand the scene of the technology, respected.
But what are the practical results? In the vast majority of enterprises, such a person is not happy, because the trend of interest will bring you to the technology management job, after all, in the domestic enterprises, can do the business, can make the customers, can make the heart, and those exalted enterprise cultural values, will be BOSS look, are eligible to sit on the CTO.
People who focus only on technology are often labeled “code doers.”
When you look at the CTO on the throne, who is obsessed with these things every day, full of values, business first, embracing change, fast delivery, who has time to study technology? Over time, nature gets further and further away from the code.
Every time I chat with my friends, I always lose track of time. When I look at my watch, it is nearly midnight and it is time to go home.
Sitting in a taxi on my way home, when I was passing yangpu Bridge, I turned my head and looked out the window at the scenery on both sides of the Pujiang River.
Looking back over the years, it seems that all companies have too much faith in success by operating, fighting wars and building cities. Compared with this, the importance of technology is too low, too ignored by the outside world.
But this is the reality, must accept, cannot escape.
I remember someone asked me, if I had no interest in business and people and just wanted to focus on technology, would there be any future development?
I usually say, “No, not in China. Go to Silicon Valley. You’ll like it.”
From June 21 to 23, I will attend the GIAC Global Internet Architecture Conference co-hosted by MSUP and High Availability in Shenzhen. At that time, I will give a presentation titled “How should Programmers set goals in the Face of workplace Change and Transformation? Keynote speech, welcome to live exchange.
In addition, the organizing committee invited 105 guests from Google, Microsoft, Oracle, eBay, Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, Sensetime, Tucson, Bytedance, Sina, Meituan Dianping and other leading Internet companies to attend. Share their practical experience, problems and solutions around AI, BIG Medium platform, Cloud-native, IoT, chaos engineering, Fintech, data and business intelligence, engineering culture and management, classic architecture and other topics.
Readers benefit: Send 5 tickets for the first day of the conference, scan the code to participate in the lucky draw.
