A while ago I lamented to Brother Yang
that this stretch at Zaihui has been a very precious treasure for me.
Today might be a suitable day —
let me pick out a few,
and share the brightest gems among them with everyone.

This article is suitable to accompany with Daft Punk’s “Veridis Quo” as background music,
so you can obtain a mindset similar to mine when writing.

Work, While Living

After graduation, when I encountered the two-points-one-line work-life cycle,
a question always lingered in my heart:
“Even though everyone says Work Life Balance,
what kind of Work Life Balance do I actually like?”

Later I discovered the state I like is just: working, while living.

After joining Zaihui, one day going home I excitedly lamented to Mia:
“Zaihui teammates are people like me!
They watch anime and play games, and write code on weekends too!”

Living in Tangqiao, I quickly made friends,
forming the “Line 4 Four Heroes” with Jinming, Zhongyin, and Xufeng.
Whether on the way to work or back,
we’d mock Python/Javascript for which is worse,
while also flattering each other for having learned 30% of Liao Xuefeng’s or Yuyuxi’s powers,
sometimes also chatting about how badly we wanted to buy Nintendo’s new Switch.

When projects were busy we’d also work overtime on Saturdays.
Some teammates looked forward to the overtime meals,
some looked forward to the Texas Hold’em battles betting on bubble tea after the work was done.

In such an environment, work and life have no hard-coded boundary.
Everyone is both work colleagues
and friends in life.
We also call each other partners.
Some partners’ chemistry went over the top and developed into couples.
Just around me alone there were 10+ couples (I always feel something’s wrong somewhere).

Everyone doesn’t see the company as “the boss’s company,”
but as “our company.”
People holding the same vision
also don’t hesitate when doing things.
At a bar team-building outing,
one partner enthusiastically recommended to the bar owner the ordering machine we developed.
Of course he righteously denied our suspicion about his motives.

For me,
work itself is life.
Doing what you love with the people you love,
this is the best Work Life Balance.

Plan for the Post, Be in the Post

Confucius said: not in the post, don’t plan for its affairs.
But on my path of upgrading from frontline developer to Leader,
what I felt most deeply is the “converse theorem” of this saying:
plan for the post, be in the post.

Some workplace partners face this expectation gap:
“Should you raise my salary first, then I do more things?
Or should I contribute more first, then ask for a raise?”
This dilemma is very common.
I always choose to take on more responsibility first.

To put it small, promotions and raises need reasons or excuses.
To put it big, the path of entrepreneurship is first finding a path in uncertainty,
then generating creative value.

When the ordering machine business hadn’t yet recruited a Windows developer partner,
I picked up just-learned C# and got to work.
When the community business needed user accumulation from zero to one,
I dragged the ground-promotion folks to scan codes and add people.
When team-dividing projects lacked a responsible person,
the first to raise a hand and volunteer was always me too.

Rights and obligations are always co-occurring,
no need to overly care about their order.

Maybe it’s related to different companies.
Zaihui is not stingy with rewards for partners who put in effort and produce results.
Maybe it’s also related to different people’s dispositions.
Mia will later become “a free and useless soul,”
but my mark will probably always be “having chosen SJTU is having chosen responsibility…”

Be Flexible, Stand Firm

Before working, hearing the four words “embrace change,”
I had no personal feel for it.
Only after working did I understand the weight of these four words.

At Zaihui I switched through several teams,
personally informed my best friend that he was fired,
went through the disbanding of an entire business unit,
also saw acclimatization-failed executives parachute in and swiftly retreat.

Each time I’d think of the grass that’s unaffected after a typhoon passes:
be flexible, stand firm.

Being flexible means not being proud, not being complacent.
After CTO Brother Hua was poached from Baidu to Zaihui,
he didn’t grab a hammer to find nails and Baidu-ify all the processes.
In the end he used Zaihui’s way,
combining production and sales,
to push forward the product technology most suitable for the business.

Being flexible also means not yielding, not despairing, not giving up.
When pushing for higher code standards and stricter coding rules,
at first no one knew where to start,
the shit-mountain bad habits were too heavy to push through,
but later every member of the team agreed with and achieved the high standards.

Whether stepping out of the comfort zone to greet change,
or trying to introduce a catfish to create change,
the best way to embrace change is to face it with a smile.

Endure Patience, Resist Doggedly

To do things well requires enduring patience and resisting doggedly,
just like the spring-engineer often tells us:
“The turtle won the long-distance race.”

Zaihui is in the local services industry,
which puts great emphasis on customer service quality.
The high-quality service provided to customers
comes from each service being continuously high quality.

This occasionally brings me the fatigue caused by energy depletion,
but more often, thinking about partners like Ergou recording outreach marketing all day Saturday,
I quickly get infected by each other’s fighting spirit. (Can’t lose to Ergou, right?)

Even in the technical realm of engineering,
continuous brick-laying is needed.
Our earliest manual code-pull deployment
developed into today’s fully automated debug-deploy-alert workflow,
all the ideas were forged from one commit after another over six years.

People get excited about one-and-done gacha pulls,
but day-and-night cultivation is my joy.

Where’s the Road? Under Your Feet

Mia and I jokingly call ourselves “Mi Boys”:
my favorite is Mia, what I play is miHoYo, what I use are Xiaomi (mi) products.
Half of my knowledge of Xiaomi comes from Lei Jun,
and half of my knowledge of Lei Jun comes from “Are You OK”…

When we can lead the direction of our cause,
the question we definitely ask ourselves is: “Where’s the road?”
The answer at this moment is “Under your feet”:
no matter what others say, just let go and do it.

For example, before the grayscale release on the main site,
internal discussion always had various worries that current traffic isn’t large,
the traffic path hasn’t been governed.
But once we actually did it,
we discovered that grayscale really can effectively control the scope of impact,
but also raises new requirements for code compatibility.

It’s the same in the workplace.
Judgments about work and positions are like Little Horse Crossing the River:
only it knows whether the camel carries salt or sponge,
how deep the water is can only be known by walking across,
the real road is one you walk out with your own two feet.

More choices often aren’t happiness.
What they may bring is more worries.
Just like Ashina Isshin taught:

“Hesitation is defeat.”

— Ashina Isshin

(end)