Disclaimer: The so-called technical management notes are the management notes of a former coder in a big company who is unwilling to be lonely and joins a start-up company. The gap between a large company and a start-up company is all-directional, with systems, atmosphere, resources and talents. From the initial inadaptability to all the way to live up to now. Filled with gratitude and luck, I felt compelled to record and summarize. The project started in November 2017, and by this time, the technical team I managed was 50 people. This background can be used for reference, examples may not be consistent with your team, but the idea may be the same, welcome to discuss with the same people.
In the previousTechnical Team Management Notes (2)- Lead peopleReceived everyone’s love, but also a lot of friends to do communication, thank you very much for your support, this chapter we will talk about the technical team management notes (3)- employment
First of all, what is the core of employment? You must have had this problem:
- Why is it that my team is capable, but from the perspective of project results, there are always bumps, either schedule delays or system instability?
- Why do I often tell the following students to take into account the scalability and stability of the system while catching up with the project schedule, but it is still difficult to do so?
- Why do I discuss some good processes with my team, but eventually they fade into oblivion and become obsolete? Is it that the students’ ability is not enough?
Here to throw out a point of view, 90% of the reason is that the team “lazy”, employing the most important, is to help you overcome the “lazy” see here, many students in the team is sure to gush out of me, since the do, every day to work overtime to 9, 10 points, black sesame seed, medlar eat, this is a lazy, exploitation again? Don’t worry. Just listen to me. Let’s learn from the product manager’s way of thinking. If a good product wants to succeed, it must grasp human nature. For example, alipay and other annual bill statistics, at the end of the year when the circle of friends is overwhelmed, its essence is to satisfy the vanity of self. Alipay does not spend any promotion costs, naturally reached the effect of dissemination, here is to grasp the “vanity” this human nature. No matter how times and technology develop, human nature will never change. Laziness is a very basic human nature, everyone is actually lazy, no matter how excellent people will order takeout, which is also a manifestation of laziness, he is not willing to eat in restaurants, lazy.
But no one wants to directly admit that they are “lazy.” Why? Very simple, because people still have vain human nature, directly admit that they are “lazy”, how much loss of face ah. You will often hear members of your team say to you, “I know this system optimization is important, but this time in order to not delay the project schedule and stable launch, so postpone for the time being”, which is actually a kind of laziness. This system optimization is indeed very important, but I feel that it is a bit challenging with my current ability. Forget it, I will not touch this troublesome thing for the time being. With the project schedule is not delayed and stable on the line, the boss is estimated to have no opinion. Yes, I still want to optimize oh, this time wait first, next time have a chance to optimize, I still a good student, yes. (In fact, as long as he has such an idea, he will hardly optimize again, and even if he does optimize this time, he will not add too many classes. Good architecture is accumulated continuously, not by one optimization.)
I want to emphasize that I’m not dismissive of lazy thoughts. Everyone has lazy thoughts, just in different forms. To put it more formally: being unwilling to leave your comfort zone to explore something you’re not currently familiar with is a sign of laziness.
- I’m just testing I don’t want to learn a little bit of development code logic (on the grounds that development doesn’t teach me)
- I don’t care what business the service is for, I just deploy it (on the grounds that understanding the business doesn’t help operations)
- I am a business developer, and I know that the underlying framework has shortcomings here and there, but it has nothing to do with me. I do not need to participate in the optimization of the underlying framework (for the reason that the technical department has been divided into business groups and framework groups).
But to be a good manager, you need to:
- Find ways to get your team to admit they’re lazy, including you
- When we find that everyone is lazy, retreat, you have to push in the back, small things sometimes more important than big things
What are the benefits of doing both?
- First of all, for the first point, the purpose is to let everyone overcome the vanity of humanity, first admit that they are lazy, so that the future communication will become very efficient. If you want to do it, do it. If you don’t want to do it, say you’re lazy. Don’t go around so much. Admit that you are lazy first, so that others can give you a push to overcome it.
- For the second point, it’s time to use your technical expertise. As a technical manager, your expertise can help you identify whether the current team is working at full capacity and how much potential there is to be tapped. As long as there is room to spare, and everyone is really lazy, you should give everyone encouragement, with your professional experience to help everyone, the purpose is to let everyone overcome this lazy, work hard to do, and finally experience a complete overcome laziness – successful experience. This experience is very important and will give your team members the confidence they need to overcome laziness. In the future, as long as you say the goal, they will use their own experience accumulated to 100% efforts to achieve it, rather than hit a wall with your method and continue to wait until you come up with a new method, which is considered as a good use of people!
The right person to do the right thing is also a very important point of employing people, here we simply do a classification summary
| category | The right thing to do |
|---|---|
| Strong technical ability, and willing to do business projects | 50% of the time for basic technology construction, 50% of the time for business projects |
| Strong technical ability, general willingness to do business projects | 70% of my time is spent on basic technology construction and 30% on business projects, but I still need to do some business projects to accumulate practical experience and avoid making basic technology a castle in the air |
| General technical ability, strong willingness to do business projects | 20% of the time for basic technology construction, 80% of the time for business projects, mainly business projects, appropriate participation in some basic technology construction, continuous improvement of technical capacity |
| General technical ability, general willingness to do business projects | Work 100% of the time on business projects |
For example, there is a less urgent but more important problem in the online system. You tell your subordinate to check the problem and tell me the reason. This target is fine from a screening point of view, but it’s too solid, it lacks a little bit of an empty flavor. It would be very nice if you could add the following paragraph: I want to know the reason for this problem, and I hope you can find out the problem in a logical and accurate way, otherwise it is meaningless. Because I want you from now on to practice your ability to look up questions, to look up questions accurately and quickly, as a kind of practice. This way, if something really urgent happens online in the future, you can solve it quickly without having to pull an all-nighter. I believe that while you have not changed the actual objective, this false statement will cause a “small touch” and a thorn in the heart of your subordinates. Even if the chemistry doesn’t happen this time, he’ll feel it later. For example, another urgent problem occurred, and he did not accumulate the correct experience of problem investigation, resulting in overtime work late at last. This time you go to help him a hand, and said before the false things mentioned again, he will be changed. In addition to finding out the causes of new problems, he will attach great importance to the accumulation and improvement of his experience, so that he will become stronger and stronger in the ability to find problems.
Remember this: Never rely on one person’s ability. Just like a team, you have to keep the depth of the bench and make certain rotations. For your team, you have to have a second tier, a third tier, in addition to a few core members. In any project, the core members, the second tier and the third tier should work together to promote it. Find all kinds of opportunities, let the students in the second echelon can take the lead, in some important projects, let them also slowly lead the promotion. Decentralization brings several benefits:
- The number of core members in the team is limited, do not let their limited energy, and the promotion of business projects bottleneck, core members should do more critical things.
- The success of the project does not depend on any one person, so that the core members and the second tier of students feel that they can do it, forming a certain healthy competition atmosphere, so as to better promote the project.
- In case of any change in the core members, the second echelon has been trained and can be replaced immediately, thus reducing the impact on the team. The simple strategy of decentralization is to try to find various opportunities to train the second-tier students and make them become quasi-core students in addition to giving full play to the role of core members. In case they fail on a project, ask the core team to help them out and make sure the project gets off the ground. And by the way, even you, as the ultimate manager, are supposed to be decentralized, and you can see that for yourself.
This is the end of the employment chapter. Recently, the company has completed a new round of financing, and there are a lot of things, so it has been delayed for a long time. I’m really sorry. In the future, I will restrain myself, no matter in management or technology, and update at least one article every two months. I hope we can achieve mutual encouragement. Thank you!