给产品技术人才的建议：不降级不投机，和优秀的人做有挑战的事

Advice for Product and Technical Talent: Don't Downgrade, Don't Speculate, Do Challenging Things with Excellent People

> By Zhang Yiming · article on his own Weibo · 2015-08-25 · [Original link](https://weibo.com/p/1001603879831552048295) ([archived](https://web.archive.org/web/20221006150822/https://www.weibo.com/p/1001603879831552048295))

I've been a bit down lately: another candidate turned me down. Actually rejecting and being rejected happen often, and don't always get me down, but, except when candidates choose another company for these reasons:

1. They just raised x hundred million US dollars. Feels like their company is bigger;

2. O2O is hot, close to money, feels like it's a better business;

3. They're offering a Senior Director title, and I can manage a team of over 100 people;

4. A giant has invested in them, feels like it's sure to work;

5. If they (the competitor) can reach 1/3 of your scale, they might be acquired, and if I join now the return is also not bad;

6. You've grown so big and your valuation is already so high, the room for option growth must be small, and the positions are all filled. [Translator's note: the first-published text has 肯定下了, apparently a slip; the Huxiu reprint has 肯定小了, "must be smaller". Translated by that meaning.]

I wish everyone well and respect each person's choice, but I don't agree with some candidates' reasons. Here I'd like to share a few points of my understanding of the criteria by which product and technical talent should choose a company, for reference:

1. Native growth ability matters most

Many people use "unicorn" to describe excellent startups; actually there's another concept that's also very important, called the EC value. EC value equals Enterprise Value / total funds raised. Enterprise value is roughly equal to valuation minus cash. The EC value can serve as an indicator of a company's intrinsic growth ability; historically Google, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Tencent have all been companies with hugely high EC values. If the EC value is too low while the funds raised are very high, it feels like being fattened up by capital. Some founders only feel at ease seeing money sitting in the account; of course some founders only feel at ease using that money to invest in many companies; neither is wrong. [Translator's note: the source writes 再用 ("again use"), probably for 在用; the "valuation—cash" dash is read as a minus sign; Whatsapp is spelled so in the source.]

But all in all, a company's native growth ability is an important frame of reference for measuring a team's creativity, efficiency or business model. And in the course of development, companies that keep a relatively high EC value often have better native growth ability. So-called native growth means the sustained growth in sales revenue and profit that a company achieves through its existing assets and team, rather than relying on external forces (external capital and resources).

2. First-rate technical talent should choose top technology companies

Since you're already considering joining an internet company, you should consider fast-growing technology companies, and all the more so if you have a technical background. But not every internet company can be called a technology company. A while ago there were a lot of popular innovations combining the internet with traditional industries: using internet marketing to transform selling clothes, selling flatbreads, raising pigs and so on. Although I'm not against such combinations, and I do recognize their progressive value, since they market through the internet and use existing internet tools to seize business opportunities, in my view this is more what business people, not technology people, should do. Technology talent should choose innovation and creation that lets technology bring fundamental progress or solve problems that couldn't be solved before.

Connecting this to the long-popular "downgrade theory" (roughly: why do something so cool? learn to use technology to do low-risk, low-competition things; elites who die on the beach are so silly), I'm not against different people and people at different stages choosing to do downgraded things, but I think some people and some companies can have higher goals: first-rate technical talent should join top technology companies, and top technology companies should dare to be first under heaven.

So what is a top technology company, or how do you assess an internet company's technological creativity? I think what matters most is technology investment and the contribution of technology to the business: of the value the company creates for users, how much is achieved through technology investment rather than through ground promotion and burning money. Technology investment includes the share of technical employees, the number of servers, investment in algorithms and architecture and so on. From this angle I personally admire Elon Mask a lot: from PayPal, SpaceX and Tesla to SolarCity, he's truly doing things with technological content that can make the future arrive early. Of course Apple, Microsoft and Google in the past were the same. [Translator's note: "Elon Mask" is spelled so in the source, for Elon Musk; the company names are written Paypal, Space X, Tesla and Solarcity in the source.]

3. A "rich family" and a "godfather" aren't necessarily good things

When our company was less than a year old, a giant once wanted to give us a very tempting investment offer: a higher valuation than VCs, bundled-install channels of over a hundred million, web traffic of tens of millions of UVs, data and so on. Accepting this offer, business growth could have become several times faster within half a year. I agonized at the time, agonized for a whole week.

Later I turned it down, because: 1. I felt this help was a stimulant: before our own inner strength was formed, it would suppress our internal force; 2. some resources distort strategy; for example, we weren't originally planning to do web, but with that much traffic, you'd keep putting resources into it; 3. the downside of giants: getting drawn into giants' wars, being forced to take sides, or even "being sided", or no longer having free and unrestrained ideas; 4. being positioned as an independent company makes it easier to attract the most first-rate talent, because the dream and the possibilities are unlimited.

The benefits are obvious and the harms are hidden, but in such cases many people tend to overestimate the benefits and underestimate the harms, which is a typical sign of insufficient delayed gratification, or else insufficient confidence in "the long term".

As for companies that sell out their future, sell out their vision, even accept very unfavorable terms to marry into a rich family, maybe the founder gets the chance to cash out and make some money, but for other talent, I strongly advise caution and not speculating. Although such companies' traffic rises fast in the short term, user retention is low, stickiness is poor, strategy gets distorted, and the core capabilities of a team blinded by appearances are held back in their growth; essentially it's building a tall platform on shifting sand, and examples are everywhere. So, just for job hunting, slightly modifying Fan Ye's words: don't join companies that marry into rich families; if you marry into a rich family it's hard to become a rich family; instead join an excellent company and become a rich family together with it. [Translator's note: 范爷 = actress Fan Bingbing; the reference is to her well-known remark that she is herself a "rich family" rather than marrying into one.]

4. Doing challenging things with excellent people matters more than how many people you manage, and more than title

"After I join, how big a team will I manage, and what title will I use?" Questions like this also often get me down. Sometimes I want to ask: "How big is WhatsApp's team? How big is Instagram's team?" You go to company xx to manage over 100 people doing unchallenging things, and that feels great? Isn't the best team one that uses extremely top-notch, capable people to do what ordinary people can't? [Translator's note: in the first-published text the quotation marks around the first two questions are reversed (”…“) and the last two questions have no quotation marks; the Huxiu reprint puts each of the three sentences in quotation marks. The marks are set here as in the first-published text, with the direction corrected.]

And titles: inflation now is worse than the ruble's. At one point I wanted to learn from Facebook's approach and implement it in the company: use whatever title you want, even CEO++. Our HR also often asks me whether we could loosen up on titles, and I almost agreed, but later thought it over: not loosening is probably the right choice, and will certainly help us find people who are interested in the work itself, like challenges and care about personal growth. And a company made up of people who want to manage lots of people rather than do first-rate things, and who like inflated titles, certainly can't have high talent density, because essentially such people don't care how excellent their co-workers are, aren't willing to open up and collaborate with other excellent people, and prefer being a "labor contractor".

When interviewing senior Silicon Valley engineers I once asked: do you care about the size of the team you manage? Several answered: not at all, "I care more about the work and the stock". They also said that in Silicon Valley, once you've been in management a long time, when a new hot company comes up it's hard to join, because early on they don't need to hire big-company directors.

Being able to do challenging things with excellent people should matter more than managing people and title.

5. Choose an excellent team, choose the leading company

China's stock market has a characteristic: small-cap, low-priced stocks easily get hyped up even with terrible results, because retail investors think a low price rises easily. I've recently found some candidates have this trait too. For example, some candidates think a certain company is smaller than us with a lower valuation, so as long as it reaches 1/3 of us, if it's acquired, there will also be a decent stock return. Some also think joining a smaller company has more room to grow, and is the only chance at a bigger return.

I don't think so. For example, Alibaba and Tencent at 5 years old: do you think that's early stage or late stage? They both later grew more than 100-fold. Alibaba and Tencent in 2010: early or late stage? Within 4 years they also grew more than 20-fold, definitely faster than most startups. So early or late is relative; the size of the future room is what's absolute. [Translator's note: the source writes 超过100倍的增长 and 超过20倍的增长, literally "growth of more than 100 times" and "more than 20 times".]

Second, a team that leads in fierce competition often keeps leading, and the gap with lagging teams also gradually widens, for example Alibaba and HC360 (慧聪), Baidu and Zhongsou. So you shouldn't pick the No. 2 with a "speculative" mindset. Finally, most internet companies follow "winner takes all", so the rational choice is to join the No. 1 company too; and the No. 1 company has more energy to do pioneering things and bigger platform things, rather than following and imitating. The No. 2, content with "a small share of the soup", easily holds a get-acquired mentality; for it, "speculation" is a relatively inevitable and rational choice. Which would an excellent talent choose?

In short, for product and technical talent, if you ask me what makes a company worth joining, in the short term consider whether income is stable and whether user growth is fast enough; in the long term consider the product model, the potential revenue scale, the industry outlook, and whether you're doing interesting, challenging, meaningful things with excellent people.

I also know these judgments don't suit everyone, and not everyone necessarily likes them. Because some people like stability, some like things familiar and smooth, some like getting more visibility for themselves, and all deserve respect. But in any case, I hope excellent young people can all find a company that suits them, and I also hope more people who share these ideas will get in touch with us! [Translator's note: this last clause is in the first-published text; the Huxiu reprint drops it.]

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