π-type talents: the antidote to the "involution" of Internet giants

A company schedule called "Working Time" accidentally exploded on the Internet.

Three days after the launch, the total page views exceeded 100,000. As of now, the documentation has collected 5000+ pieces of information and is still being updated. The content not only brings together the company's commute to get off work, lunch and dinner time, but even includes details such as whether Friday is special, the number of working days per week, and whether to write a weekly report.

What's more interesting is that the initiators of the document are four young people with similar experiences: they have interned in a large Internet company, are undergoing school recruitment, have received letters of intent from several large companies, and are fresh graduates. They also have the same trouble: how to choose an offer.

This is the original intention of the "Working Time" project, and behind it is the common problem of Internet manufacturers.

After ten years, the domestic Internet has accelerated and a large number of high-precision and top-notch talents have poured into large factories; but ten years later, when intensive farming has replaced horse racing, the phenomenon of talent density is greater than business complexity, and "involution" has begun to spread.

The inward volume makes more and more young people hesitate at the gate of Dachang. Being tied to work software 24/7 and becoming a screw in an Internet giant after graduation seems to be no longer the best choice for young people.

"On this day in 2021, China has become the world's second largest economy, and China's per capita GDP exceeds 10,000 US dollars. Can 996 bring rapid development? 955 can bring high-quality development." This is one of the project sponsors. A paragraph on Zhihu.

In the current "hardest graduation season", what is the antidote to the "involution" of big Internet companies? Pi-type talents may be one of the answers.

1

Dr. Barbara Oakley, a famous American writer, mentioned in the book "Growing by Leaping" that "pi-type talents" refer to senior compound talents who have at least two professional skills and can integrate multiple knowledge.

Jobs and Elon Musk are both spokespersons for π-type talents.

Jobs, the most outstanding work is of course Apple products. But Apple's core is "art + technology", and "designing technology products with artistic standards" was Jobs' greatest confidence when he designed the first Apple computer.

"Silicon Valley Iron Man: The Adventures of Elon Musk" once recorded such a passage: It is not surprising that a boy fantasizes about space and the battle of good and evil, but if the boy takes these fantasies seriously, it is too much People are incredible.

Elon Musk, who has completed the feat of launching a rocket by a private company, has built the world's most popular electric car Tesla, and has also built the world's largest online payment platform PayPal. With a double degree in economics and physics, his name prefixes not only entrepreneurs, but also engineers and philanthropists.

Wang Xing, the founder of Meituan, is one of the π-type talents in the domestic Internet industry.

Meituan scientist Xia Huaxia once shared a story. At a dinner with Wang Xing before joining Meituan, I thought that the serial entrepreneur would talk about lofty ideals and the industry, but after the meeting, he talked about cloud computing. It was 2013, and cloud computing was still a frontier and niche term. Xia Huaxia was surprised, "Meituan started cloud computing in 2012."

After flipping through a few pages of Wang Xing's fanfare, unfamiliar people may question it. It seems that there is no field or topic that Wang Xing is not curious about, and the questions raised are often sharp and straight to the core.

Wang Xing's thinking is deep and different from ordinary people. When everyone is paying attention to the frog who "boils the frog in warm water", he is paying attention to the "people who boil the frog". Xu Xin of Capital Today commented on Wang Xing, "He is a deep learning machine."

Embracing change and being patient for a long time are what Wang Xing often said.

He once said that one of Alibaba's "six-pulse swords" is "embracing change"; Zappos' company culture goes further, advocating "embrace and drive change"; Gandhi directly said "be the change you want to see" (be the change you want to see).

The spirit of "I can't, but I can learn" has made Meituan people and Meituan a success.

2

In September 2020, Meituan co-founder Wang Huiwen once returned to Tsinghua University to give a speech on the theme of "Life Without Limits".

Afterwards, a widely circulated view is: what is the most scarce talent in this society? It is a "pi type talent". When a person has cognition in two fields, the power he produces is not just 1+1, but a 0 followed by a 1.

At the beginning of the business with Wang Xing, he had no money and could not afford to hire excellent engineers and product managers. Wang Huiwen had to learn code while learning products by himself. Both of them were forced to become "π-type talents". Because of this, efficiency Much faster than peers.

From the intranet, Fanfou to Meituan, this is the upgrade of a group of "pi-type talents" to fight monsters.

In the era of intranet and Fanfou, the evaluation in the circle was that the team had no core competitiveness, and the technical products were not very good.

In the "Thousand Regiments War" in 2010, the external evaluation was that the team's product technical capabilities were very strong, but Wang Xing and Wang Huiwen were introverted, had no work experience, and did not manage a large team, so they should not be able to manage such a large team. Scale offline team business;

Wang Xing dug up Gan Jiawei and set up a ground push iron army. In 2014, Meituan Takeaway was launched. According to external evaluations, Meituan's product technology and sales team management are very strong. This year, the management ability of the offline sales team has become the core competitiveness of Meituan.

The story of Wang Huiwen and Meituan is also an "unlimited life". Wang Xing thinks about the strategy, and Wang Huiwen is responsible for the implementation. From group buying, takeaway to online car-hailing, he led the team to lay down the country.

This is in line with Wang Huiwen's character, he likes the pleasure from 0 to 1.

The group buying pattern stabilized in 2012, and takeaways entered Wang Huiwen's range. He recruited Shen Peng, who was in charge of Meituan’s takeaway business at the time and the current founder of Shui Dichou, to form a team of more than 10 people and did what he said.

After the takeaway pattern stabilized, Wang Huiwen set off again, and online car-hailing and retail are his new battlefields. An insider commented, "Where there is gunfire, Wang Huiwen is there."

3

In the past 14 years, after turning around three times, Qin Yafei's Meituan growth label is: no limit.

When he joined in 2007, Wang Xing asked him if he believed it could be done? Qin Yafei said without hesitation, "Trust, because trust can be passed on."

The great uncertainty in the early stage of starting a business brings enormous pressure. For example, when I first started doing big data analysis, the technology accumulation and talent supply in the industry were not enough, but the business grew rapidly. Wang Xing often directly pointed out at the management meeting at 9:00 in the morning, "This data is wrong." Under the pressure, Qin Yafei learned to recognize objective laws, grasp the main contradiction and solve problems.

In 2013, we had a team of more than ten people and encountered a management crisis for the first time. For a while, Qin Yafei had to do a good job of psychological construction when he went downstairs in the company before he was willing to go upstairs. Gan Jiawei's management experience of "opening the sky" (breaking through self-imposed limitations) has made Qin Yafei very useful, "I tell you to listen, I will listen to you; you will listen to me, you will listen to me."

From a technical manager to a product manager, this is Qin Yafei's second turn. "After 4 years of building a big data system, the team strength and technical system have begun to take shape. When writing code, I usually do not limit myself to Technology, but consider the problem from the perspective of business value, so take the initiative to apply for transformation product manager.”

But this is still not the end. After the listing of Meituan in 2018, Qin Yafei found Wang Xing and proposed to start over in the new business and join the retail business that was still in its infancy. This transformation has the highest difficulty factor. Qin Yafei started by sorting out the minutes of important meetings, and he had to record and listen to unfamiliar retail vocabulary.

Qin Yafei, who is now at ease, has to convince himself to break through the blind spot of "don't know what he doesn't know", and dare to take the initiative to enter the "valley of despair" from the "top of ignorance".

In the past eleven years, Meituan has written the story of "keyboard + cement", and it has also gathered a group of Meituan people with the same taste. Unlimited π-type talents are already a genetic symbol rooted in Meituan's bones.

Chen Qizhu, who joined Meituan in 2018, has seamlessly integrated into it. At the end of 2020, when the epidemic broke out in Shijiazhuang, Chen Qizhu had just ended his half-year life of following cars on the front line, getting up early and staying up late. He is not a driver, but an algorithm engineer of Meituan.

At that time, he, who was in charge of the route planning for Meituan’s Kuailu business, started running the route with the driver who delivered the goods at 4 or 5 am every day, and solved unexpected problems on the route on the spot. Record the steps and links. During the day, I discuss the live line problem with my team colleagues, and then advance the algorithm from it, and then continue to follow the car in the evening, and the cycle repeats.

The ability of technology research and development + the perspective of business landing constitute his complete work content. "I know the actual situation of truck drivers, and the data recorded at that time is very valuable for future path planning."

In fact, the wiring system of Meituan Kuailu was set up in 2019, but it encountered many obstacles in the advancement. The "keyboard" world needs to understand the situation in the "cement" world. Chen Qizhu improved the system online in the first half of 2020, and in the second half of the year had the experience of improving the system by following cars.

In half a year, he traveled to dozens of cities where Kuailu's business is located.

An old Meituan person told me that Meituan has always been "unfriendly" to old employees. The reason is that the more new people join, the more old people need to get out of their comfort zone and embrace changes. Every Meituan person is a π-type talent, and this has become the DNA hidden in the bones of Meituan people.