Some time ago, I made a sharing for algorithm engineers who were newly recruited in the company. The purpose of sharing was to exchange some experience for the new students, and the activity was conducted in the way of interview: we answered several questions that the new students were concerned about together. In addition to a few questions with strong company background, I think there are still some questions that are relatively common. So sort it out, I hope to be helpful to the students who have just embarked on this road.
This article mainly hopes to answer these questions:
- Initial challenges and how to overcome them?
- About the “cute new” mentality
- What has been the biggest growth or gain since you started working?
- Most want to say a word with younger students
I: Challenges at the beginning of entry and how to overcome them?
To be honest, there are definitely some challenges when you come on board. For new students in our company, generally speaking, there will be no output in the first month. Personally, I feel that the biggest challenge is getting familiar with the overall business process, which means there’s a lot of code to get familiar with. This was a nightmare for me without a lot of previous code experience or engineering experience.
I don’t know how other companies document construction. At least in our company, when I first came, the new document construction is relatively poor. Code is the best documentation. Often you ask a business question, and the boss throws you a codebase you’ve never seen before and says you should just look at it.
There is no shortcut to the problem itself, is to spend more time than others to study hard. In addition, I found that the senior members of the group were very nice to explain some of your possibly stupid questions to you around 9 or 10 PM when the day’s work was almost over. In this process, don’t be shy, have the courage to speak, don’t be shy. Make sure your questions are well-thought-out, and don’t ask questions that can be solved by simply looking up some documentation or Google. Don’t take someone else’s nice as an excuse to be lazy.
Then do more tidying up yourself. Many students saw the new document construction is not comprehensive, they began to complain crazy, as if this is the reason why the new into the state of slow. What I did at that time was to sort out the pits I had stepped on and the results I got from asking senior students, and sort out the first relatively detailed rookie document of our group. Later, many students were familiar with their work according to this set of documents I sorted out. Many of the holes you step on yourself are likely to be stepped on by future generations to make others better. At the same time, I will be very impressed by what I have sorted out and have a deeper understanding of the whole system.
In fact, other jobs are similar, if you see the shortcomings of the current situation, do not complain, you can find the shortcomings, in fact, your work can play a role.
Two: About the “cute new” mentality
Many new students like to think of themselves as “cute new”. It seems that I do things slowly, have bugs and fail to meet expectations. After all, I am cute and new.
I actually hate it when new people think of themselves as “cute”. First of all, most newcomers aren’t cute. Second, everyone is equal and serious in front of the code. Online doesn’t reduce the chance of bugs just because you’re new.
In addition, the company gives everyone the same amount of money, is it just to let you “cute” yourself here? = In fact, “cute” should be just your own positioning, other students in the group, probably will not consider you as “cute”. This period of time with a newly recruited children in the school, I hope he can quickly become a young person to be able to take charge of their own.
The key to being cute is attitude and responsibility. If you think of yourself as “cute,” then you might think that what you do is thoughtless, buggy, etc., and why do you participate when there’s a problem online. But frankly speaking, the so-called “cute new” is just a lack of business experience of young people. Work efficiency may be low due to lack of familiarity, and problems may be found slowly due to lack of familiarity. However, if this results in a lack of completion of things, it is definitely not in line with expectations.
It’s okay to be slow because you’re not familiar with it, but other than that, don’t give yourself too many excuses just because you’re new. Take responsibility and others will trust you with their work.
Three: After work, what do you think is the fastest growth or the biggest gain?
The greatest thing you can learn is not to put limits on yourself.
No matter what position you start in, you probably have some of your own work on hand that you definitely need to do well. In addition to fulfilling their own job, if you see any dissatisfaction, as far as possible to improve. At the same time, expand your horizons as much as possible and don’t put limits on them.
For example, I am a recommendation student. Among many indicators that need to be optimized, one of the most important is click rate. However, recommending content back to the user, in addition to the content itself, the style itself can be a very important factor in the click-through rate. If you are aware of any problems or defects existing in the previous style, you can take the initiative to talk to the product students and put forward some ideas. Your idea of the product may even be more valuable than the work you’re doing.
The overall goal of the work is to create greater value for the product, and maybe the optimization of the work at hand is always optimizing the local optimal solution. But if you can jump out and grab some upstream and downstream information, you can find a bigger optimal solution. For example, if you find that the bottleneck to growth is not in the algorithm, but in some mechanism of product design. You see this phenomenon, and you have the data to prove it right, and that may create more value for the company. That’s what sense means when you say you have a product.
These upstream and downstream information itself is not difficult to obtain, in fact, you can take the initiative to communicate with senior students in the group, or you can talk with students across the group, in fact, you can get.
We’re algorithmic engineers to some extent, but don’t limit ourselves to doing what algorithmic engineers can do. Essentially, we’re here to create value for the company. The function of each job may change as technology evolves, but the overall logic of creating value for a company to benefit remains the same. ** Problem solving has a long link, in which any link that creates value can ultimately affect the outcome. ** So don’t be stuck in your niche, try to create as much value as you can. In this way, the ultimate value can be improved.
Four: most want to say a few words with younger students
Growth is your own thing. ** This is what a very senior person in our company shared with us when we just joined the company.
What does that mean? We need to arrange our own time to recharge and study what we are interested in. I’ve learned that many of the company’s most senior executives spend their weekends reading the latest paper.
Companies are under no obligation to pay you and help you grow at the same time. If your growth is not as good as the company’s expectations, the company can always find someone who is better suited for creating value. So you should recharge your spare time.
At the same time, the accumulation of their own business experience is also very important, to do more summary. By summarizing and sorting out what was done well and what was not done well. Such accumulation and precipitation down, their experience will be more and more rich.
2. Break out of your comfort zone without boundaries. ** I’ve already mentioned this a lot. You have to believe that the students around the company, including your boss and classmates are not fools. If you can add value to the company, you will get opportunities, promotion and promotion.
No boundaries also means that although you have your own job, you can also observe what other students are doing around you, whether it’s in the same group, or on the product or service side of the business line that you collaborate with. Their specific work, they can do some thinking: if they do the same work, what kind of method will be used. If the methods are the same, you can observe whether the student works or not, what problems he meets in the process, and how to overcome them. The method may not be consistent, so whether their practice is better than his, the final effect can confirm their judgment.
The results of other people’s work can also be used as an auxiliary accumulation of their own experience. In this way, the speed of their growth will be one step faster.
Be a reliable person. ** What is reliable?
First, the tasks assigned by the boss can be completed on time with good quality and quantity, which is reliable for the first layer.
At a higher level, your boss gives you a task, you figure out why it is there, and from that point of view, what other problems are not included in the boss’s previous thinking. Then not only did you do what your boss wanted you to do, but you also gave your own insight into the problem along the way. That’s a very reliable student.
If everyone thinks you’re a good student. Don’t worry, your work and tasks will keep piling up. Accordingly, your rank and so on May come with the “outside things” that you previously cared about.
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Did you have any problems growing up? Feel free to leave a comment and let’s discuss. Please also follow my wechat official account: Fengchitalk.