This article was originally created by TGO Kunpeng Club. Link: CTO Huang Yong: Make management automatic

Yong Huang is currently CTO of Tezign.com, author of architecture Adventure, author of Smart Open Source project, member of Shanghai Branch of TGO Kunpeng Club, lecturer at QCon. More than 10 years of Internet software architecture and technology management experience, good at agile development, advocate “lightweight” architecture idea. Like reading, love communication, willing to share.

Writing in the front

Huang yong is not so much a technology manager as a time manager. You see him at tech conferences; At his most frequent tech blogs, he can do “one a day”; He is also the author of architecture Adventures: Writing Java Web Frameworks from Scratch and Architecture Adventures: Lightweight Microservices Architecture (Part 1). In addition, he often carries out offline communication activities of TGO Kunpeng Club, which is well organized.

When asked about doing these things outside of work will not feel a waste of time, Huang Yong happy replied: “both as a lecturer, write technical articles, books, are in fact the skills learned again understanding and arrange, through the way of sharing make our thinking more clearly, this is a fruitful.”

Because of this openness and sharing mentality, he has never been shy about sharing his growth experience, technology and management experience. He often says, I hope my mistakes and experience can be used for reference by my technical friends.

Career exploration

After graduating from college in 2006, Huang joined a software company in Shanghai as a programmer. During this period, I developed an Internet-based platform software for users to customize on demand with my colleagues, and finally provided users with SaaS based application software. In 2008, he led a team to Shenzhen to develop a broker management system for a well-known domestic securities company. It was also in this project that his role began to change. He began to learn how to deal with people, how to do requirements analysis, how to turn requirements into technology, and how to lead a team. “This project was a milestone for me in moving from programmer to project manager, and I’m grateful to my boss and colleagues for giving me the opportunity,” he says.

His achievements were valued by his boss, and Huang yong got more opportunities to exercise than other colleagues. In addition to programmer and project manager, I have also acted as product manager and pre-sales consultant. It can be said that the entire software life cycle of the post, he did almost all over. However, due to the lack of management experience at that time, there were some problems and confusion in the process. After four years on the job, he decided to leave the company and look outside.

But he didn’t know what to do next because he had held so many positions before. “Should we go technical or managerial?” This sense of disorientation caused him great pain. In this case, Huang yong experienced as long as half a year of professional turmoil. “At that time, I changed companies two or three times a month, from three days to a month,” he says with a hint of irony. “By then, many companies in Shanghai had blacklisted me.” It’s an understatement, but it’s hard to imagine.

However, this turbulent period was not without its harvest, and the person who inspired his desire for a career as an architect appeared in the latter part of the turbulent period.

Huang yong told reporters about an unforgettable experience:

He had been at one of the top companies in his field for less than a week. One day, as usual, he walked into the office and was surprised to see a cloud of smoke, a group of people smoking, talking and often laughing, led by his boss. Looking up at the no-smoking sign above their heads, Huang found the scene ironic.

Huang Yong, who is at a low point in his life and in turmoil, immediately raised the matter to the level of corporate culture. After countless times of ideological struggle, he bravely walked into the boss’s office, directly to the boss to resign, and in the boss’s questioning to tell his immediate boss take the lead in smoking. Instead of getting angry, his boss calmly talked to him about industry trends, the company’s growth and helped him plan his career path. He was torn. After coming out of the boss’s office, he actually gave up his resignation.

But how does it end when the leader is offended? Huang yong’s heart is very helpless, that night is difficult to sleep. The next day he arrived at the office early, but the boss was already in his office. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the leader looking at him, but neither of them spoke. This state is very difficult, he simply broke the embarrassment, take the initiative to find the leader, ready to take action, the worst is fired.

To our surprise, the leader didn’t say anything about the previous day. Instead, he smoothly drew the company’s technical architecture on the whiteboard. The leader, who used to be a senior architect of Alibaba, talked for two hours from the technology of Alibaba to the current technology status of the company. Huang Yong listens to of very carefree, two people exchange also very happy, already forgot he is that “smoke ghost”. At the same time, he began to think that being an architect was cool, and he wished he could be a good architect one day.

Huang also learned from his leaders that many of the team members were his brothers from Ali. It made Huang realize that smoking might just be a way to bond with his brothers.

Instead of blaming Huang yong, the leader entrusted him with important tasks. After all, tattling on your leader in front of your boss is a bad thing, and the better your leader treats you, the more guilty you feel. He eventually left the company, but with a clear direction in mind: to be a technical path, to be an architect!

The road of architecture

Huang was well aware of his situation. Although the code had been written smoothly, it was his weakness to design the architecture around the company’s business. Fortunately, a foreign company offered him an Offer as an architect, and he went there without hesitation.

With his previous experience, Huang is well equipped to handle his new job. But that didn’t stop him from writing technology blogs in his spare time. “I clearly remember that on September 1, 2013, I published my first blog post Smart Framework: Lightweight Java Web Framework on the Open Source China website, which influenced me for the following two years and even changed my career path.” Huang Yong told reporters.

When huang started writing this article, he didn’t know for sure because the framework was just his idea and he hadn’t even started writing a line of code. Weighed, he came up with a better idea, is the idea first written articles published to the web site and to let students discuss, based on the discussion result to do the specific implementation, and then will implement the process written technical articles, finally, please review, and based on everyone’s advice to improve, so it can form a benign cycle and valuable. Slowly, his technical articles attracted a large number of readers, and he was even invited to join the company.

In 2014, Huang yong gave up his comfortable working environment at a foreign company to join AdChina. “The way I see the future of the Internet, programmatic trading of ads and the combination of advertising and big data, the most valuable thing in the future is data,” he said.

At that time, Yi Media was in the early stage of technological transformation, and it was necessary to migrate all.NET to Java, which was very challenging. However, Huang yong spent only half a year to redesign and build the system architecture for the team, help colleagues with skills training, and lead the team to successfully migrate all products to the Java platform, which was beyond everyone’s imagination. He says he broke it down into three steps: first, defining development specifications and processes; second, cultivating core technical staff; and third, transforming it in phases.

At the beginning of 2015, Alibaba established in-depth cooperation with Yi Media, and ali Mom business Division was integrated with Yi Media to become the “new Ali Mom”, so he also became an employee of Alibaba, responsible for the system architecture of Ali Mom’s big data brand marketing products. It was also during the integration of the two companies that Huang wrote his first book, Architecture Adventures: Writing Java Web Frameworks from Scratch, which he hopes will help aspiring architects.

Why is this book called Architectural Adventures? According to Huang yong, the role of an architect is similar to that of an explorer. You have to go out in front of everyone and explore the unknown world. Some potholes need to be stepped in, and then they need to be filled in to pave the road. Paved the way, programmers can easily walk through the army.

The struggle to airborne

After his modest success as an architect at Alibaba, Huang yong faced another role challenge. He joined Tecan and became a truly airborne CTO. On the first day, one of the company’s PHP veterans ran up to Huang, who was still sitting on his butt, and said, “Huang Yong, I want to talk to you about something. Please come here.” The tone of a boss talking to an employee who has made a mistake.

“Good! Huang Yong face such assault can only see recruit open recruit.

“Are you going to shut us all down?” The other side came straight to the point.

“Why do you ask?” Taking the time to throw the question back, Huang thought quickly about how to answer it.

“I heard that you are a Java developer with 10 years of experience, so you should be an expert. I don’t know Java, but I’m sure you don’t know PHP either, so you’ll probably kill us, right?” The old employee spoke his heart out.

“The only people I ever kill are the ones who can’t get anything done, don’t get results, and dawdle. It’s up to me to do it right.” Huang Yong offers such an answer.

After saying this, Huang yong got the other party’s recognition, which was to solve the first thorny problem. But the troubles are far from over. With no airborne experience, Huang yong made a serious mistake: he turned a paratrooper into an airborne team.

Just a few months after Huang Yong came to Tezan, many of his colleagues at Ali quit and followed him to Tezan. The old soldiers were in a panic. They were afraid that the new soldiers would kill them. So the company formed two incompatible teams: veterans and recruits. Split up at dinner and stab each other at work. This upset Huang so much that in order to ease the situation, he invited everyone to have a meal together. But the table is still the old sit side, the new sit side, each playing with their mobile phones, do not communicate at all, the scene is very awkward.

Later, the veterans left the team one by one, and Huang Yong realized his mistake and began to think and summarize. “If I had to do it over again, I wouldn’t bring my old subordinates in, or even if I did, in a group. It’s a big no-no in the workplace.” Huang Yong said very firmly.

After review, Huang formulated a new induction plan: each new employee should find an “old driver” to guide the way, so that the new employee has a chance to work with the old man, and can be integrated in a short time. Tezan’s current method is that when a new recruit comes in, the old man will look at his resume and pick out “apprentices” for himself or herself. Sometimes, the old man will compete for a qualified new recruit so that he or she can easily fit into the team.

The way of management

At present, Tesan’s business is doing very well, and the size of the technical team is gradually growing. “The team has made a qualitative leap compared to when he first joined the company,” Huang says proudly. In the past, he had to lead us to do projects, analyze requirements, write codes and look at details, including dealing with bugs. However, now we don’t need to worry about details, because our excellent technical friends have grown up. More and more technical leaders are able to take the initiative. I have energy for more important things.

According to Huang yong, leading a project well is only the first step as a leader. It is called “getting things done”. The second step is to cultivate talents, let them become your left and right hand, to help you share things, this is called “training people”; In addition to leading good projects and cultivating good talents, we should also set some rules and regulations so that management can be automated and run automatically like a production line. This is called “establishment system”. To be a competent leader, one must achieve success, refine people and establish system.

How to cultivate your right hand and left hand? Huang Yong believed that these people are the closest to you, you should set high standards for them, strict requirements, the principle of good things, but for the front-line grass-roots staff to learn to tolerate them, this is called the “near strict far wide” principle. “For example, IF I want to promote a team Leader, I will make some requirements and tell him in advance: I will give you a probation period. If all the team members vote for you during the probation period, you can officially take the post. On the contrary, if one person says you are not good, I will replace you. Let him know that being strict with him is so that he can stay in the position of Leader. He can establish a good relationship with the team, which is the primary prerequisite for a Leader, while his professional skills are secondary. The former are called ‘soft skills’, while the latter are called’ hard skills’.”

As for making rules, Huang Yong also gave an example: at the beginning of a project, a project launch meeting should be held, the status should be synchronized, and problems should be recorded. After the project is finished, the database will be generated in the process of operation, which can be regularly put out for new training. Teach people how it works, and when they start a new project, they’ll follow the process themselves.

“I don’t even have to report to them one-on-one. I don’t think a skilled leader needs a formal debrief to know what’s going on.” Huang Yong said confidently.

If he wants to know the progress of a project, Huang usually organizes a dinner or group meeting. In a very relaxed state, ask everyone about their recent work, have you encountered any difficulties? Can I help you? Have you summed up some failure experience to remind everyone? At this point, people will be willing to share some details. According to Huang, specialized conversations are prepared, and you may hear prepared words that are not true.

To seek the breakthrough

As a technical person, Huang yong is a lecturer at many well-known technology conferences, has published three best-selling technology books, and has won a lot of praise in the industry, but he is never proud of it, nor satisfied with it. He frankly told reporters, business ability is his current stage of the short board. What Tesan is doing is a brand new business and there are not many runners on the track at the moment. Although the sharing economy is the next trillion market, not many people really understand it. He also needs to learn more about the business and market, and lead the team to develop the products most needed by users.

“For many, many years, we technical people have been responsible for landing requirements, which is very rudimentary. In the future, I hope I can have more opportunities to go out and communicate with users to understand what they are thinking and what they want. I hope to understand the essence of the business and help traditional industries with technology, so that the Internet can create the future.” Huang yong expressed his expectations.

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