On May 20-21, 2017, MPD Workshop·Shanghai Station will be held at the Everbright Convention and Exhibition Center in Xuhui District, Shanghai. This MPD workshop invited Zhang Wei, Senior Director of Zhihu Engineering, to conduct the theme of "6 Guides to the Implementation of Engineer Culture". 3 hours of in-depth sharing. Before the workshop, the MPD reporter interviewed Mr. Zhang Wei. The following is the interview record.
Source of the article: Official account: msup (ID: msupclub) Follow the reply "Experience Workshop" for a surprise.
MPD reporter: What is the background of this transition from valuing overtime culture to valuing engineering culture? Why does this shift occur?
Zhang Wei: Personally, I think that the overtime culture emphasizes "input/input"; the opposite engineering culture emphasizes "result/output". The corresponding background is to pay attention to results and emphasize result orientation. The development of an enterprise and a team is the result of each goal being achieved.
MPD reporter: What exactly does engineer culture mean? In what ways is it reflected in the team?
Zhang Wei: "Culture" in engineering culture has always been a relatively abstract concept. Many people can feel it, but it is difficult to describe it clearly. However, when it comes to companies and engineering teams, the implementation of culture requires concrete implementation. , the way team members are motivated, the conventional way of doing things, what will be rewarded, what will not be encouraged, etc. These real feelings are the projection of team culture in the minds of each team member.
MPD reporter: As a team manager, how to deal with this shift, what changes in thinking and action are required?
Zhang Wei: Everything is to solve problems, and problems need to be found before solving problems. Each team and enterprise has its own characteristics, and the transformation is only to solve problems according to the characteristics of the team.
MPD reporter: There are a lot of discussions on Facebook's engineer culture on Zhihu. Besides Facebook, what other companies do you think have better practice of engineer culture?
Zhang Wei: Foreign Google, airbnb, etc.; domestic Zhihu, Douban, etc. have related practices to share.
MPD reporter: What is Zhihu's engineer culture reflected in? How did it land?
Zhang Wei: We will use some mechanisms to create an environment to help engineers grow, such as RFC (Request For Comments) technical review, Hackathon, encouragement of daily sharing, etc., stimulate subjective initiative through guided learning, and improve technical level through books, cases, etc. , and encourages to apply what has been learned into practice and grow again in practice.
The idea of RFC technical review comes from when the Internet Protocol was just launched in 1996, and it has been 20 years since then. The reason for citing this concept is to hope that the technical personnel within the enterprise will have more opportunities to communicate. The difference between RFC technical review and traditional technical review is: RFC emphasizes technical review before writing code; it emphasizes online discussion and offline review.
In Zhihu, every Hackathon (hackathon) has different rules, and the company will guide the general direction to avoid confusion caused by aimlessness. Our Hackathon is not only attended by technical people, but a carnival for all company owners, including financial, administrative and other logistics departments. These departments usually have some ideas, but they cannot realize them without resources and technology. Hackathon may turn some good ideas into reality and feed them back into products, such as the paid authorization that has just been launched on Zhihu.
MPD reporter: Practicing engineer culture is a driving force for team work. Compared with KPI and OKRs assessment, what are the advantages of culture driving?
Zhang Wei: Engineer culture, KPIs and OKRs are not contradictory. It's just that the engineer culture is more suitable for giving full play to the initiative of the engineers in the team to achieve the result.
MPD reporter: Thank you, Mr. Zhang Wei, and look forward to your wonderful sharing at the MPD scene.
About MPD
MPD is the abbreviation of Make Professional Discovery. MPD workshop is a practical classroom based on the development of job roles. It is a role competency model jointly developed by global software, Internet enterprise coaches, and front-line R&D team leaders. It is a kind of continuous practice and innovation. Driven team management to enhance training projects.
The MPD workshop is divided according to the job functions of the software R&D center, and is named after product manager, team manager, architect , development manager, and test manager as five sub-venues to promote resonant thinking, in-depth discussions and mutual exchanges of roles.