On June 5, 2021, the 2021 China Developer Ecosystem Summit hosted by SegmentFault came to a successful conclusion. CNCF Ambassador presented a talk titled “F2E to DB: Growing up in business with a variety of developers”.
Guest: Flower Meat, CNCF Ambassador
Sort and publish shorthand: SegmentFault Editorial Department
Hi, everyone. My name is Hua Roo. Today I feel very honored to have the opportunity to share with you some of my experiences or thoughts on developer operation.
I’ve been working there for more than eight years. I don’t think I’ve achieved much, but I must have done something right. So today I have this opportunity to be recognized and to talk to you for the first time about some of my experiences and thoughts in this field. It would be worth it if I could give you a little help.
My sharing session today is mainly divided into four parts:
The first part is a little bit about the experience, but some of the numbers are hidden because of some of the data security, but you have to keep in mind that these are still very good projects;
In the second paragraph I’m going to talk about the basics of how developers operate;
The third paragraph is about the competitiveness of developers’ operations.
The fourth paragraph, of course, refines today’s theme.
First of all, I learned computer at the beginning, and then I started to do market operation on SegmentFault. I was an early Hackathon organizer in China, and I also got to know a lot of developers because of this, which is a stage for me to enter the industry.
Later, I went to Ali Cloud, where I was mainly responsible for the Tech Insight Summit of the Cloud Conference. I was independently responsible for the landing of the whole paid conference, and I was the first to start the WorkShop. Later, I became the product operator of Container Service and was responsible for the growth of public beta users. After that, Ali Cloud MVP community was launched. It’s a very fortunate recognition that these projects are still in existence, with full teams working on them.
In 2018, he joined Ant Group and officially entered the open source field. Coinciding with the open source of Sofastack’s original distributed architecture, Ant Group has established its international influence in the Mesh layer through the continuous dissemination of the Service Mesh on a large scale. Currently, I am responsible for developer ecosystem operations at OceanBase, an enterprise-class distributed database.
Above, is my simple experience statement, there are many things, have time to share with you. I often joke that my technology stack is sinking more and more. From the front end to the public cloud to middleware, and now to the database, it has been sinking all the time. I will also base on this experience in the following post. In fact, it gave me a lot of education and lessons.
As I prepared the content, I kept thinking who is today’s audience? I was told by the organizer that there were investment companies, some students who were in the developer business, some developers who were in the personal brand and personal influence business, and I guess there were headhunters (joking). About the methodology part, the front of the outstanding guests or you have learned a lot in a variety of public accounts, a variety of books.
So what can I bring to the table that’s different?
Therefore, I interviewed several students of developer operation. This PPT is the main questions they mentioned:
I have thought about the sources of insecurity and uncertainty behind it. In most cases, developers operate this position, which is usually reported to the Marketing Department or directly to the technical Leader. The dilemma we face is that the marketing team wants to get sales leads through the developer community. On the tech team, you feel like you’re just helping us synchronize articles, do campaigns, get user feedback, and do execution. Some also report to the HR department as the employer’s technology brand in order to recruit better R & D students.
In the end, how to enhance the voice of the developer operation, how to carry out career growth? Developer operation is a relatively new profession, just like the product manager a few years ago, there is no curriculum and no system, and it is all about scratching the stone to cross the river. Different companies have their own value mechanism, which makes developers run the whole job market differently.
I hope that what I have shared today can inspire people to think about it and promote the construction of a value system for the whole developer operation industry. Hopefully, the following posts will help you answer a few questions about how developers operate.
Underlying logic (fundamentals)
The first is to be a developer running our lowest level of logic. From this title, from F2E to DB, no matter in the front end, middleware, or database, they are completely different technical fields. When contacting different developers, I think the underlying logic of doing things remains the same, that is, persisting in providing valuable things to help developers grow. First you need to know who you are going to help. We’re not going to be feeding M5 steak to a baby, you might think you’re making a really good thing, but he’s not digesting it, and that’s what you’re not studying. What are some of the common outcomes of not being well studied that can lead to problems? No one reads the article and no one comes to the activity. It could be a channel issue, it could be a content issue, it could be some kind of superficial feedback.
If you don’t have a clear object orientation, even if you read a lot of methodologies, you may have problems landing. A good analogy is that boiled radish soft water can boil egg hard, in the same environment using the same approach, but the object is different, resulting in the result is completely opposite.
I particularly emphasize that developer operation, in fact, is the same as the underlying logic of the developer itself, which is an object-oriented thing. Therefore, before making all operational decisions and planning, you must know clearly who your object is. This is what we usually say about portrait. If there are multiple portraits, what is the highest priority portrait? What is the content of operation, what is the behavior of operation, what is the occasion of operation, these will be right.
So, I put this emphasis first, make sure you know who you’re with. Specific to the ground, if the beginning is indeed difficult to find a suitable object, such as I just came back from the front to the middleware, found in front of the person you are not the same habit, often joked to a database developer is more difficult than let a middleware developers openings, entirely different character, is the feeling. So let me draw the picture above. If you really find it difficult to cross the tech stack, you can actually find the solution from the right side: what kind of developers are the internal tech team, the most accurate group of people. According to the contact to understand: their context, the platform they visit, the community they see, can first deduce what the initial operation strategy is. The bottom arrow of the chart shows how we worked with the internal team to screen what we were going to produce in line with the key business objectives, and then translated the technical language into a language that was acceptable to the general public.
To social understand the language, To developer translate it and put it in the appropriate place we screen, such as the database, is not going To a front-end conference. The whole point of this slide is to put quality content in the right place and in the right developer community, to express it correctly, to express your tone, to attract the same kind of people. This will be explained in detail later. What is tonality? That is to say, the whole temperament is a sense of unity from the design of the logo to the organization of the content and even to the organization of your activities. Here to special emphasis is a lot of my classmates turned from traffic operation or the operation of the traditional thinking, will be particularly superstitious traffic data, I think we have to developers as a people, not just flow, not just the data, the data is a reference is not the answer, the data can help you to modify some behaviors, try some MVP, but it is not the answer, Users are not your data, not your traffic.
The fundamentals of how developers operate
Now, the second section I’m going to share today is what are the basics of operating as a developer?
If you look at the pie I drew, in fact, I think that all the things that developers do in the first year or two are basically part of the pie, or the things that developers have been doing for a long time, they can’t get out of the pie. There are a lot of people organized according to different composition logic, all of which are OK, such as Awareness, Interest, Purchase and Loyalty. They draw a line according to this, and do what kind of things in what stage. Let me make it simple. I think the three processes are recognition, recognition, and identification. The feeling is that I’m pulling you closer. First meet, then know what kind of a person I am, and later may agree with some ideas, I think and people are very similar to get along with.
The pie on the right is a lot of details, the implementation of things, I think these basic skills will pay more attention to the careful and careful part. I have also supervised several colleagues from the developer operation. They are all very careful and patient, and they are also squeamish about typesetting. These are all good basic qualities.
The first stage: awareness. Is the common brand, such as what is the main KV, what is the name, what is the Slogan, LOGO is how, this is actually quite interesting. In the process of communicating repeatedly with the brand designer about the Logo, he would ask me what the key words are, so what is the color used, and what is the intention graphic of the key words. Therefore, through such combination and color matching, the name and Slogan positioning will be presented to everyone, which is actually quite interesting. What I want to emphasize is that operation is actually a job that connects many positions, and you can learn a lot from students of various majors as long as you want. For example, in the process of brand building, there will be communication with designers like the above. When digging out key words and a sentence to be presented with the technical team, I will talk with colleagues who do communication about how to tell stories to the public. It’s all learning, and that’s the cognition part. For example, when you see a tick, the first reaction is “Nike”, “Just do it”, which is something like that.
The second stage is the cognitive stage. The cognitive stage involves the system of content. Content system, from different groups of people, different levels of ability to do the corresponding content, help him better understand the product and technology, help him better use the product and technology, this also corresponds to the right part of the content system, is relatively detailed.
And then finally there’s the phase of identity, where you really start to have a two-way interaction, where the community really comes alive. At that point, there’s an emotional operation, there’s a deeper interaction, I get your feedback, you get your help, you get really involved in the community. In fact, this feeling is very similar to the “Sense of Participation” written by Xiaomi many years ago. Developers really participate in this project, become a part of the project, and become your own business. Identification is such a process.
The community system on the right is done through activities, but how is it done? There was a time when it was popular to grow Hacking, to talk about the AARRR model. I understand the core is: everything works. This is part of the analysis of the data by observing the key data and explaining the relationship between the growth of the business data in terms of the sub-goals that are disassembled from the goals.
That’s a rough overview of the basics, but is that enough?
I often ask my team members, did you do it or did you do it well? The second part of the basics is do you have a sense of purpose, do you know what the outcome of doing this is, and ask yourself, is it really done? What can developers do when they come, just call them? What do I want them to do? How can I motivate them so that they can get value and I can get the business results that the business side needs? We need to constantly ask ourselves, to do meaningful operational things, rather than just floating around, because we are ultimately responsible for the business. In other words, the purpose of developer operation is to help the enterprise and developers achieve a win-win situation. Instead of indulging in the simple activity of the developer community or blindly pursuing commercial transformation, developers should find a virtuous cycle point to ensure healthy and sustainable growth. By insisting on creating value in such a way to get more investment from the company, in fact, it is also helping developers to get better access to quality resources, so that they can grow better, it is not contradictory.
Just said will be biased basic skills, not because of the basic skills, think this thing is relatively Low, or think this thing threshold is relatively Low, I have seen really can do all things reliable people are very few, very sad to see “reliable” has become a praise of professional vocabulary, it should be a recognized quality. Basic skills are good, basically you can do better in this industry, we must believe that the steadfast doing things will be seen, developers are will cherish will see will identify. A lot of people questioned me, saying that you just do activities, do meetings, but I just think that I do better than others, do you have such confidence? (the Flag set up in disorder, in case of falling, we laugh at).
Competitiveness of developer operations
So that’s the fundamentals part, so let’s move on to the competitiveness part.
Qualified technical operators have basic skills, the ability to talk to technical people, know what the technical language is like, and can even use some metaphors to make people better understand professional and unsophisticated things. They have a strong sense of goal, and they not only do things well, but also insist on doing things well.
So what does a good technology operation look like? I add attributive in the front, solid operation basic skills, all the details will be more sense than others, more sensitive, and the ability to coordinate multiple positions, the higher level I think is emotional operation. This is what I particularly emphasize, as a community person should cultivate. And one of the questions that I was collecting was is it more technical or more operational? I have seen a lot of developers turn to developers because they think they don’t want to write code anymore, which is my way out. However, after a short time, they go back to writing code again. Because operation is an emotional interaction, it is not 1/0, true or false, it is actually a gray state, so I think developer operation, There will also be high requirements for operational ability.
Emotional operation, you can turn them into people who trust you, can turn users into your fans, after becoming fans, this is me and you become us, this is not my thing, it is our thing, this energy is very, very awesome, is very big. On the other hand, if, as I mentioned earlier, you treat developers as traffic, and you do things, whether you do them well or not, and you don’t consistently create value, I think that’s killing the goose that lays the golden egg. Real investment is valued by developers.
Emotional operations are also costly, so we need to find developers who can become our own people and move forward together.
So how do we do that? I’ve listed four ways to do this, which is to run the top 20% of your core users 80% of the time. It’s the same logic as hiring. It’s more efficient to hire one person at a high price than several at a low price. Spend 80% of your time and investment on running 20% of your core users, and then use them to attract and transform similar people, such as setting the bar and setting the tone of the group, what kind of people will meet the requirements of the 20% of your core users, and what great things do they do with us? This is one of the logic that I did Ali Cloud MVP at that time.
The second is to encourage others to get more recognition in material, reputation and industry, or even more than they pay. This is called “buying horse bones”. Let everyone feel that I am really proud of this career, really gained growth and recognition, in fact, is the spiritual and material two grasp a logic.
The third is to create content. What kind of content will attract what kind of people. You can also make contributions to the content of the community with these 20% core users, and attract and convert more people with the content.
Fourth, the traffic, the crowds, the effective attention in your community, continuing to create value, all the operations community, all kinds of connection cable on line, the diversity of play very, so he could stay at your paradise, this is to make him from a user into a process of fans, actually behave has in front of the methodology to follow, But this is the mystery. I will also see that there are many things that have been done well. There may indeed be some problems, but we can work together to correct them and tolerate them. Let me give you a very small example. Once we held a SOFA Meetup in Guangzhou, which was a full-day activity. Due to the typhoon, only I, the only staff member, arrived in Guangzhou, and no one else came. In the morning, the lecturers were in Guangzhou, but there was no staff. In the afternoon, the lecturers weren’t even there. Difficulties encountered: there was no staff for check-in, venue preparation, etc., but I was moved that the first participants helped complete the whole activity together, which was really a process from me to us. A lot of things do not need to be done perfectly, if people agree that this is a common thing, but will feel that you are more sincere, sincere is the most moving. I don’t know if it’s getting across, but that’s what I want to emphasize on this page.
What about the second paragraph, which I think is competitive: “Link the dots,” the part of innovation I mentioned. Why do I find it so fun to be a developer? First of all, technology is relatively rational, while operation is relatively emotional. This is a career with both left brain and right brain. With the development of the Internet, people’s reading habits and communication modes have changed, and the way of operation needs to be constantly innovated and constantly adapted to the current popular communication mode to learn. This is the thing that ensures the vitality of our profession. You know, things that are alive don’t get old.
Operate love to play will play, will continue to innovate. Let me give a very small example, or ask a question: essay + short video + warcraft =?
I came to Oceanbase in September, and when I studied the database, I found that it was full of papers. Stunned, the feeling is: very strong but can not eat. I found that the form of short video, five minutes of scattered time, can be some not so deep knowledge, five minutes to do it. Can we get together and play together?
I just gave it a try, and I created a video number, and I thought “OB Tattle” took about two seconds, and I thought “OB Tattle”, and that’s how OB Tattle has become a very important way of communication for us now, which is pretty coincidentally. Every time we forwarded thumb up and read it, it was good. We are still innovating and optimizing, and we are happy to find that this cooperation with the technical team can send out the energy of each other. Raw knowledge + popular operation form, equal to what? It’s a vital part of the job.
We will take some technical points, and then we will story or gamify them, and we will put some common scenes that you know, we call the script, and this is also our own development students. Of course, there are also some discussions on this, such as why to choose video number instead of Douyin Kuaishou, how to achieve growth, and the transformation relationship with business objectives, etc. If you are interested, you can have a detailed offline chat. This is not as simple as saying it, but innovation is always interesting.
What I just said may seem a little meaningless to you, but I hope you remember these words, which are unreasonable and incomprehensible, and you may have a feeling in the future that developer operation connects the enterprise and developers, and developers are the energy of developer operation. Therefore, I particularly want to see the state that developer operation and developers complement each other.
I’ve been on the hot side for over eight years, and I’ve been through some really low times, high and low, up and down, and it’s made me think a few things, some wake-up call and a reminder, when the tide has faded, are you swimming naked, or is it your muscle, or is it just the clothes you’re wearing?
If you are in the start-up, you can go to think, especially this year or the next few years, the developer market will hold on a good draught, in such a rush, that in the startup of classmate, you have to do well, get some recognition and opportunities, what is market brought by the wind, or because of your own strength. In big companies, you can think about whether the platform brand gives you the brand effect, the platform ability gives you, or you are something.
To do things, to borrow a force is great, but always remind ourselves that straighten evaluation standard, a good time to stay awake, when trough also has the correct evaluation to yourself, not self-pity, will be more clearly know how to save, how to maintain a growth condition, this is for us to have a clear cognition.
I am not a big deal, but today I really want to make more developers see the value of their operation through my strength. I really want to encourage more developers to operate, because our current situation is really not very good, but I really want to encourage everyone, developers are the energy of developer operation, we must insist on creating value for them, we must also pay attention to continuous cross-border learning, you have to believe something, and stick to it.
As I said at the beginning, I didn’t do anything great, but I certainly did something good. I just kept doing this for eight years, and I got a lot of recognition and a lot of care. A lot of developers say that I trust the things made by flowers, and that I will learn whatever project you are responsible for next. These are the trust accumulated over a long period of time, which is a very, very beautiful thing. I am a little moved by what I said. Anyway, I really want you to know this, and I really want to encourage you.
To conclude, operations for me is the process of turning you and me into us. If the ideal of developers is to make something people want, I think the ideal of developers operation is to make something developers want.
Today’s talk is part of my thinking, and I’m looking forward to talking to you more about how developers with different experiences think about these things. I do not feel today is a sharer identity, more is a degree of casting a brick to attract jade.
Good luck to everyone, and good luck to myself!