Profile: Fexia, a P9 employee of Alibaba Group, is a senior technical expert in the group’s customer experience business group. He has 10 years of work experience and served in a well-known IT foreign company for 7 years. He has rich experience in JDK development and CRM platform architecture.
A group photo of Fatman and Jack Ma’s portrait
IT engineer Fatty Xia had a troubled year in 2014. At the end of the year, his confusion about the future turned into action and he decided to quit his job. Before this, the fat man has been an important member of a well-known IT foreign company Shanghai r&d center, he serve the technology giant has for 7 years, from a blank sheet of interns, to acquire the business head, fat man always feel the foreign company still gave him a lot of development opportunities and treatment, but the situation is better than people, under the extrusion of Chinese Internet giant, The former giant has shown signs of stumbling.
“BAT is growing so fast, IT’s impossible for me not to notice.” For several years, as he watched the news or the technological innovations of new Internet companies, He would occasionally stop and think about where traditional IT research and development met the Internet, and where his future lay.
Leaving foreign companies: Why does he want to transform the Internet?
The last gasp of foreign companies in China
2014 was not a good year for foreign companies.
Under the influence of the Internet, the consumption habits of domestic users began to change gradually, as well as the ecological environment of the whole industry. Under the situation of the three pillars of BAT and many start-up companies “blooming”, the whole Chinese market became dominated by entrepreneurs. Below this trend, bear the brunt is traditional IT foreign capital enterprise.
Since 2013, the market share of foreign IT companies in China began to be gradually diluted by domestic Internet companies, foreign companies set off a wave of layoffs, long-serving, senior employees became the focus of the target of layoffs. More than ten years ago, foreign companies, which were favored by countless domestic IT talents, began their last struggle in the Chinese market. The result was unexpected for Fanxia, who was proud to join an international IT giant after graduating from Nanjing University with a master’s degree in 2007.
“Ten years ago, joining a foreign company was a relatively good choice for programmers, both in terms of personal growth and career development.” Ten years later, after foreign IT giants have witnessed the development of the entire Chinese software industry and the reversal of foreign companies in China, Fanxia cannot help but sigh at how quickly the wind has changed.
Good sense of smell and technical foresight
Seven years working in foreign company, fat man one step a footprint from the beginning to do things independently, to lead the team to do a small module, to lead the team to do a complete project, continuously prove himself, to enlarge the range of responsibility in the process, not only access to the Java core code at the bottom of the research and development, has laid a solid basis of Java development, I also received a promotion every two or three years on average.
But Fatty Xia, who has been following the trends of the IT industry in his spare time, has noticed that traditional industries need to change. All the projects his company was doing in China were part of a global project, but landing in China was difficult. On the one hand, in the field of integrated services, emerging competitors such as Huawei and Ufida have begun to challenge foreign companies strongly, stealing customers from the company with more affordable prices and reliable performance. On the other hand, the emergence of cloud technology, big data and other technological trends has begun to shake the traditional IT giant’s foundation.
Just then, the IT giant recognized the crisis and embraced mobile — setting up in-house innovations like Web2.0 and using middleware to help companies develop mobile apps across platforms. Excited by this project, which exposed him to some new technical concepts and Internet concepts, He volunteered to join the project and began to try PaaS platform based on this project. It was the project that gave him his first exposure to Internet research and development, and some of the ideas and inspirations he took from the project into the products he later transformed for Alibaba.
The courage to leave your comfort zone
Although fanxia communicated with the offline team about promotion details and technical improvement plans every day after the transformation of the Internet project, he felt lonely again and again after finishing his work. In his view, the company’s difficulties stem not from technology, but from business models and product concepts. “The company’s services are for the enterprise, it will be for each enterprise customers through the middleware to deploy a solution alone. Some solutions are very reliable, very delicate, of course, but at the same time, cost and operation requirement is very high also, bring a lot of pressure. Internet companies is not the same.”
So what is the r&d process of Internet companies? Fat Man’s curiosity grows day by day. To be fair, spent several years in a foreign company, the company gave him a lucrative pay and steady promotion channels, but changes in the current political situation, the “stability” instead confuse fat man, he repeatedly asked himself: I will not get too comfortable, a stable and predictable career path, is it really what you want?
“The job in a foreign company is secure and I can lead a large team. From my personal point of view, I haven’t reached a bottleneck yet.” “But an individual is an individual,” he says. “Under the prevailing environment at that time, I had to give up stability and embrace change.” In 2014, Fatman finally decided to stop daydreaming — he decided to visit Internet companies to see for himself the future of technology and products.
“The first consideration is naturally several companies in BAT. I am already familiar with the Java research and development process of traditional IT. Next, I want to go to a top Domestic Internet company to see how they do IT.” Fat Man said that at that time, Ali Java and distributed is the industry’s top, so the first choice ali. Such a transition seemed to him the most straightforward and would allow him to build on some continuity in his technical base.
Coincidentally, in the same year, Hangzhou-based Alibaba set up its group Customer Experience business group, which was also looking for a senior architect who could bring fresh blood to the company in the area of system architecture. In this way, Fatman handed his resume to Alibaba’s HR at the end of 2014. Because Fatxia’s technical expertise in JDK development and his years of technical management experience in well-known IT foreign companies were valued by Ali, the interview went smoothly. On the eve of Double 12 in 2014, Fanxia formally submitted his resignation to the original company. He came to Hangzhou alone, rented a single room, and began his new life as a P8 employee of Ali Group’s customer experience business group.
100 offers say:
In Fatxia, we can see the career development trend of an IT engineer from a good background in a foreign company under the changes of The Times.
The year of 2014 is the cut-off point for the career transition of IT engineers in foreign companies. The data on the 100 offers also shows that the number of IT engineers job-hopping from IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and other well-known foreign companies has been increasing year by year since July 2014. Most of them graduated from Universities such as Peking University, Tsinghua University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University and Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications. They have more than 5 years of working experience, with an average age of 30. Among 100 offers, each of them received more than 10 interview invitations. And most of them end up in Internet companies.
Joining Alibaba: What challenges did he face after the transition?
From the traditional IT foreign enterprises to the different style of Ali, Fat Xia does not hope to simply blend in, he also hopes to obtain new knowledge and exercise in Ali, can promote him to complete the real transformation of the Internet.
However, the transition is bound to be a painful process, and like many foreign companies after the transition to the Internet, there are many challenges ahead, waiting for him to overcome one by one.
Build teams from scratch
Just entered Ali, everything is new, although he joined Ali as a middle-level, but at the beginning of the entry, Fat Xia deliberately put the lowest mentality, “just came to Ali, the heart must be holding a learning attitude, after all, what is not quite the same as before.”
After the entry of the first task is to lead the team to set up businesses in the service business complaint system, internal code smell “drum” — let the new recruits a fully functioning vertical business contact, is ali consistent strategy, such benefits can be through a small business practice as soon as possible familiar with enterprise operation process and business model, making it a smooth landing.
“As the person in charge of the whole Dengwen Drum project and product leader, I had a very clear idea at that time, which was to focus — we would find the thing that needed to be completed within one and a half years, and then we would recruit all the staff to devote themselves to this thing. After the achievement, we would slowly look at how to do other things.” Fatman says the first challenge he faced was how to build a team.
“One PD [product executive] and me, two people, that was the initial makeup of our team.” Before joining the company, Fat Man had several years of technical management experience, but he had never built a team from scratch, and the WORK in the JDK development field was very low-level and had high requirements for programmers.
This is just entered Ali’s first project, fat man extremely cautious. After understanding the business needs, he made the corresponding recruitment plan and was on standby to participate in the interview of the recruitment target. These potential team members come from different business units within Alibaba, as well as from social recruitment. With the cooperation of HR, Fatman spent 2-3 months to build up his team and finally perfected a team of more than ten people who could execute the project.
With the continuous expansion of fatxia’s work responsibilities, the team of more than a dozen people has gradually expanded to more than 20 people, more than 30 people, until now, the team led by Fatxia has nearly 45 people.
This is engaged in technology management of fat man, is a new height.
A sharp increase in business pressure
Through dengwenggu project, Fanxia is familiar with the r&d process of Internet distributed technology, and has a deeper understanding of Ali’s corporate culture and work rhythm.
With the development of CCO services, departments become larger and more businesses are added. However, data islands remain between systems. In cross-business service scenarios, customer experience will suffer. With his team having to move between several different business units, Fatman spent more time thinking about solutions to this problem, and then came up with an idea to revamp Alibaba’s existing customer service system.
“I want to use technical means to make the system support more platforms in Ali system, minimize the repeated construction of platforms, and maximize the efficiency. For example, if alibaba buys a company, it might have built its own customer service system before, but we can provide a common platform that requires only technical configuration, rather than secondary development.” Fatman says he likes to compare work to Lego bricks. He is the one who designs the basic model, leaving it to the experts who know the most about the business scenario to build the imaginary structure.
Since 2015, Fatty Xia has led his team to sort out the underlying common capabilities of the whole customer service platform and make it a micro-service. During that time, Fatman spent a lot of effort on the research of microservices related papers and technical applications.
In the end, Fat Man decided on a policy of clear direction and gradual change. “We will first cut in bit by bit, finish each piece in depth, and then expand to the next section. Otherwise, such a large system will be a great challenge both in terms of risks and knowledge gaps.”
It was during this transformation that Fanxia felt the difference between the way Internet companies work and traditional foreign companies.
The first is business pressure.
“In Alibaba, I am more sensitive to business results and more goal-oriented. To achieve business results, we tend to innovate quickly and adjust quickly during project execution, which requires more agility and execution of the team.” Fat Xia admits that these are all very different from the way he works in a traditional foreign company.
The foreign company he worked for made middleware software, which was aimed at enterprises, not end users, and was relatively stable. However, Ali’s projects are oriented towards end users, and the pace of rapid iteration and adjustment with business is very fast, resulting in much greater business pressure. “At the last company, bugs were fixed in months, but at Alibaba, bugs are fixed in days. It’s a completely different rhythm.” The fat man said.
More frequent iteration speed
At the same time, in the product iteration speed, fat man also ushered in a new challenge.
The ali original customer service system of micro service is a constant process of iteration, the fat man led the team from the field, find the breakthrough point do break up in the system, a block from which began the minimum risk, verify the effect and then gradually expand the scope of a little deeper, finally achieved the function of the old system coverage and business migration.
If 5 days to release the old system, divided into modules after each small teams can focus in the field of their iteration, basically every day can have a new release, sometimes even a day can do a dozen times on multiple systems in view of the module, the r&d efficiency and stability are greatly promoted.
Fat Man felt much more tired and enriched than before. Because he did feel a change in himself: that he was thinking more and more about the possibilities of technology from a business perspective.
Successful transition: What did he gain at Ali?
In June, Fatman was promoted to P9 at Alibaba.
But rather than promotion, Fatty xia believes that what he gained more from Alibaba was a successful transformation as a foreign entrepreneur in an Internet company. Through the dengwenggu project and the transformation of the customer service system, Fxia realized his original plan when he joined Alibaba: to see how Internet companies do research and development, and to transform the vertical industry system in a SaaS way by combining the technology he learned in foreign companies and alibaba’s existing technology.
In terms of specific skills, he has achieved the improvement of technical management ability, and at the same time has a stronger team development and execution ability, as well as a way of thinking about problems from a business perspective.
In terms of technical management, with the continuous expansion of the technical team size, Fatman spent more and more energy on thinking about the development direction of the team, the growth of each team member, and how to bring more welfare resources to the team members. When he gets confused, he looks at what his more senior colleagues around him are doing and starts talking to them, throwing the problem out there and asking them for advice.
In terms of team development and execution, Fanxia starts from small teams and starts from the business service system. He first touches a vertical business and understands the way of research and development. Then he gradually thinks whether there is a better way to support these vertical businesses more efficiently. Then in the process of continuous trial, verification, improvement and iteration, improve the overall development efficiency of the team.
In terms of business thinking, ali’s business changes quickly, because the traditional foreign enterprise agility is not enough to the business of express company big version of online once a year, will be launched in ali months or even weeks, because the user demand in the side, forcing the fat man has to work time business goal oriented to decompose, Then timely according to the data feedback to verify the effect and value of the product.
All of these are the hidden wealth gained by Fat Man in Ali.
100 offers say:
In Fatxia, we can see the characteristics of a tech person who successfully transforms from a foreign company to the Internet:
The first is a good reading of trends and the courage to leave your comfort zone. When the living space of foreign enterprises in China is gradually squeezed by Internet enterprises, Fat Xia felt the crisis for the first time. He knows how much a change in the environment can have an insidious impact on his career development, so even when he got a good job in a foreign company, he chose to escape his comfort zone and venture into unfamiliar territory.
Then there is the empty glass mentality. At the end of the interview, Fatman recalled, “I still remember the four words I saw when I joined Alibaba: Don’t rush to do something. Don’t rush to prove or challenge yourself. First, see what people around you are doing and how they are doing it.
Then there is the strong technological drive. Fatty Man would not have made it this far without his love of exploring deeper technologies and his curiosity to keep learning. “It’s important to keep learning and not stop.” Fat Xia says that finding time to read books, technical articles and blogs every day is a habit he has developed over the years. The purpose is to learn more about technology changes and development trends and develop business sense.
Finally, keep asking for advice. When fanxia worked in a foreign company, he established a long-term mentor relationship with an American technical manager. Every week, he would ask this “teacher” for advice on the problems he encountered in work, including how to guide people and how to make a more reasonable career plan based on the current situation. “Look more at how technical leaders who are a little far away from you do things, open your vision and don’t bury yourself in things.” At the end of the interview, Fatman said this when 100Offer asked him what advice he could give programmers who want to build on technology.
But the most important and the most important, is always to embrace the change of mind and courage. Industry changes and technology development are changing with each passing day. 100Offer believes that always embracing changes is fatman and one of the essential qualities of any excellent Internet person.
Above, is the successful transformation of the Internet ali man fat man story, and all plan to transform the Internet, and are experiencing the pain of transformation programmers.