lizhenqiu blog

I recently had an interesting discussion with a colleague. We were recounting our job histories and how our, shall we say colorful personalities, could have negatively impacted us long term. The truth is, I was kind of an asshole coming out of college (some would argue I’m still kind of an asshole, but that’s beside the point). I was arrogant and bitingly sarcastic, a generally irreverent character. I thought I knew it all and was quite proud of myself for it.

I had a habit of telling more experienced engineers that they were doing things wrong, and despite being right most of the time, I didn’t have the personality to make it effective. During one particularly engaging conversation, one of the senior engineers stopped and said, in these exact words, “I’m going to f***en beat the shit out of you if you don’t shut up.” I laughed it off because I knew he wouldn’t dare, and only years later did I realize the relevance of that statement: it was actually what he wanted to do.

Since that time I’ve grown up a lot, learned to watch what I say, and treat people with respect regardless of defining characteristics. The sarcasm stays in check while in a professional environment; I let it out to play when I’m with good friends. This self-control, along with a lot of other invaluable lessons, came to me not of my own accord, but through the careful guidance of the mentors I’ve had along the way. If not for them, who knows if my interpersonal relationships would have short-circuited my career.

The truth is that I have been incredibly blessed in my career because of the people I’ve come into contact with. My managers along the way molded a really rough-around-the-edges character into someone I’m proud to be. More than that, because of their influence, I’m not just a good programmer – I’m a good teammate and a good person. So impactful were these people on my life that I frequently recount their advice to the colleagues that I now mentor.

I also find their advice to be universally applicable, so I’d like to share the things I was told that helped me along the way. Of course, some of these are paraphrased since my memory for exact phrases isn’t all that great, but I believe I’ve captured the important parts correctly.

Don’t be a short-order cook

My very first job lasted 8 months because the company shut down. As I was talking with my manager about what I would do next, he gave me this advice:

Nicholas, you’re worth more than your code. Whatever your next gig is, make sure that you’re not a short-order cook. Don’t accept a job where you’re told exactly what to build and how to build it. You need to work somewhere that appreciates your insights into the product as well as your ability to build it.

This is something I’ve kept in mind throughout my career. Simply being an implementer isn’t good enough – you need to be involved in the process that leads up to implementation. Good engineers don’t just follow orders, they give feedback to and work with product owners to make the product better. Fortunately, I’ve chosen my jobs wisely and never ended up in a situation where people didn’t respect or value my insights.

Self-promote

My second manager at Yahoo pulled me aside one day to give me some advice. He had been watching my work and felt like I was hiding a bit:

You do great work. I mean really great work. I like how your code looks and that it rarely breaks. The problem is that others don’t see it. In order for you to get credit for the work you’re doing, you have to let people know. You need to do a bit of self-promotion to get noticed.

It took me a little while to digest what he was saying, but I finally figured it out. If you do good work, but no one knows that you did good work, then it doesn’t really help you. Your manager can back you up but can’t make your case for you. People within the organization need to understand your value, and the best way to do that is to tell people what you did.

This is advice I give to many of my colleagues now. Self-promoting doesn’t mean, “look at me, I’m awesome.” It means letting people know when you’ve hit major milestones, or when you’ve learned something new. It means showing people the work that you’re proud of. It means celebrating your accomplishments and the accomplishments of others. It means being visible within the organization. The engineer who sits quietly in a corner and just codes away is always a bit mysterious – don’t be like that. A quick email to say, “hey, I finished the new email layout. Let me know what you think” goes a long way.

It’s about people

I was very title-driven earlier in my career. I always wanted to know what I had to do to be promoted. During my first one-on-one with my new manager on the Yahoo homepage, I asked what it would take for me to get promoted. His words still ring in my ears:

At a certain point, you stop being judged on your technical knowledge and start being judged on the way you interact with people.

I’m not sure I’ve ever received a better insight into the software engineering profession since that time. He was exactly right. At that point, no one was questioning my technical ability. I was known as a guy who wrote good, high-quality code that rarely had bugs. What I lacked was leadership skill.

Since that time, I’ve seen countless engineers get stuck at one level in their career. Smart people, good code, but the inability to work effectively with others keeps them where they are. Anytime someone feels stuck in their software engineering career, I recount this advice and it has always been right on the money.

None of this matters

I went through a period at Yahoo where I was frustrated. Maybe frustrated isn’t the right word, more like angry. I had angry outbursts and was arguing with people constantly. Things were going wrong and I didn’t like that. During one particularly rough day, I asked one of my mentors how he managed to stay calm when so many things were going wrong. His response:

It’s easy. You see, none of this matters. So some crappy code got checked in, so the site went down. So what? Work can’t be your whole life. These aren’t real problems, they’re work problems. What really matters is what happens outside of work. I go home and my wife is waiting for me. That’s pretty nice.

I had moved to California from Massachusetts and had a hard time making friends. Work was my life, it was what kept me sane, so when it wasn’t going that meant my life wasn’t going well. This conversation made me realize I had to have something else going on in my life, something I could go back to and forget about the troubles I had at work.

He was right, once I shifted my mindset and recategorized the annoying things at work as “work things,” I was able to think more clearly. I was able to calm down at work and have much more pleasant interactions with people.

Authority, your way

When I was first promoted to principal engineer at Yahoo, I sat down with my director to better understand what the role entailed. I knew I had to be more of a leader, but I was having trouble being authoritative. I asked for help. Here’s what he said:

I can’t tell you how to be authoritative, that’s something you need to figure out on your own. Different people have different styles. What you need to do is find a style that you can live with, that makes you comfortable. I can’t tell you what that is, but you do need to find it for this position.

I spent a lot of time that year observing people of authority and how they interacted with others. I took note as to how they walked, how they talked, how they dealt with problem situations. I tried different styles before I finally came across one that worked for me. My style is uniquely me and anyone learning to be in a position of authority has to go through the same growing pains. My advantage was that my mentor clued me about the process up front.

Moving from “how?” to “what?”

During a conversation with my manager at Yahoo, I asked what the expectations were with my new position. He answered:

To this point in your career, you’ve answered the question, “how?” As in, we tell you what needs to be done and you figure out how to do it. At this point, though, you need to answer the question, “what?” I’m expecting you to come and tell me what needs to be done.

This is the part where I see a lot of engineers get tripped up, and I would have as well if not for this piece of advice. Switching from “how?” to “what?” is very hard and takes time to develop. It also takes a bit of maturity to be left to your own desires as to what you focus on. After all, if you can spend your time on anything you want, you are also solely responsible for what you produce.

At Box, we call this “running open loop,” meaning that you do your job with minimal oversight and yet still are making a significant positive impact on the engineering organization and the company as a whole. This is the step where many engineers fail to make the leap, and I still give this advice to anyone who is trying to get to the next level.

Act like you’re in charge

I had just sat through a meeting where I had nothing to say. During my one-on-one with my director, I mentioned that I was just in a meeting where I had no idea why I was there and had nothing to contribute. He said:

Don’t ever do that again. If you’re in a meeting, it’s because you are there to participate. If you’re not sure why you’re there, stop and ask. If you’re not needed, leave. You’re in a leadership position, act like it. Don’t go quietly into a room. Just act like you’re in charge and people will believe it.

In that piece of advice, my mentor had reminded me of a lesson I learned while acting in high school: no one knows when you’re acting. If you’re nervous but act like you’re not, then people won’t know that you’re nervous. The same with leadership. The old phrase fake it til you make it comes to mind. From that point on, I never sat quietly in a meeting. I made sure I only went to meetings that needed me to participate and then I would participate.

Let them win

I went through a particular period where there were a lot of arguments on the team. I prided myself on ending those arguments with authority. I had a “my ruling is final” mentality, and my manager noticed that and gave me this piece of advice:

I see a lot of arguing going on, and I see you pushing through to win a lot. I know that most of the time you are right, but every once in a while let them win. Pick the things that really matter to you and push for those but let the other things go. There’s no need to win every argument.

This was one piece of advice I resisted initially. I was right nearly all of the time, why would I ever let someone else win? However, as I had grown to trust his instincts, I gave it a shot. The result: there were less arguments. People didn’t feel like they had to get one over on me, and in turn, I became better at identifying things I really didn’t care that much about. I stuck to my guns on important issues and let the others ones get resolved by the other party. The intensity of all conversations dropped considerably.

Conclusion

Looking back at the brash guy I was when I graduated college, my career could have ended up very different. I was seen as a malcontent, a smart but hard-to-deal-with guy who people dealt with because they had to. If it weren’t for the mentors I had along the way, as well as some humbling failures early in my career, my interpersonal skills (or lack thereof) could have very well done me in. These days, I regularly seek out those who are more experienced than me and ask for advice. I may no longer make big, glaring mistakes, but I also don’t want to wait for one to happen to seek out the experienced insights of someone I trust.

The nearly five years I was at Yahoo were some of the most transformative in my career. I got to work on interesting problems at a large scale, but moreso I was blessed with a series of wonderful managers and other mentors within my organization. I credit those conversations with turning me into a person that I’m proud of today, both at work and outside in “real life.”

If I can leave you with one overriding piece of career advice, it would be this: identify someone at your work that is smarter than you in some way (technically, organizationally, etc.) and attach yourself to them. See if you can regularly have lunch or coffee and pick their brain for the vast amount of knowledge it has. Your career, and maybe even your life, could end up drastically better by doing so.

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如果有来生我愿变成一棵树
在森林里无声的生长迎接阳光
每个寂寞的雨天和有鸟飞过的深秋
都在树干上留下痕迹变成年轮
然后在下雪的日子里等待一头双眸如湖水般的鹿

你知道你在说的是什么吗？

私以为是段誉，富二代，官二代，就是北宋时期的王思聪。乔峰，所谓丐帮帮主，叫花子头子也是叫花子啊，臭鸡蛋也是鸡蛋，手下全是集穷丑矮挫撸残二与一身的24k纯屌丝，放现在也就是个酒量好，力气大，一个人顶10个人搬砖量的民工头。虚竹，现在所称的凤凰男，在天涯已经被爆的体无完肤。

有一种经济学说法，地球上所有的能源都是不会枯竭的。经济学家们举了一个例子说，假设在一个房间里堆满了花生，让许多人一起来吃。一开始，每个人伸手抓一把就能捞到许多花生，但其后，随着屋内花生越来越少，花生壳越来越多，人们要在花生壳堆里翻很久才能找到一颗花生。这时候，有个人再也没有耐心慢慢找，他大吼一声，我不找了，我去外面买花生吃。于是他就离开了。慢慢地，其他人也发现，在这间屋子里找花生实在太难了，于是人们都渐渐离开，再也没有人在这间屋子里找花生吃了。然而，在这间屋子里，埋藏在花生壳底下，也许还有很多花生。同样的道理也可以用在地球上的能源资源上，当地球上资源存储量逐渐减少，资源成本就会不断提高。假设地球上只剩最后一桶石油，那它一定是被收藏在大英博物馆或卢浮宫里;如果地球上只剩最后一个油田，那它将永远埋于地下，没人会把它开采出来，因为太贵了，没人用得起。从经济学角度分析，资源总数虽然是个衡量，但成本会影响其用量，随着某种资源不断减少，其成本不断上升，最终该资源成本达到某个峰值时，人们就再也不会用这种资源了。

《庄子·齐物论》中有个“朝三暮四”的故事：宋国有一个很喜欢饲养猴子的人，名叫狙公。他家养了一大群猴子，时间长了，他能理解猴子的意思，猴子也懂得他的心意。狙公宁可减少全家的食用，也要满足猴子的要求。然而过了不久，家里越来越穷困了，狙公必须要减少猴子吃栗子的数量。但狙公又怕猴子不顺从自己，就先欺骗猴子说：“给你们的栗子，早上三个晚上四个，够吃了吗?”猴子一听，都站了起来，十分恼怒。过了一会儿，狙公又说：“给你们的栗子，早上四个，晚上三个，这该够吃了吧?”猴子一听，一个个都趴在地上，非常高兴。 这个故事以前是用来嘲笑猴子太愚蠢，但是从现在的经济学看来“朝四暮三”比起“朝三暮四”对猴子来说风险更小，收益(利息)更大，所以猴子是更加理智的，但是正确的选择竟然被中国人嘲笑了几千年。

断章严重的很。一向中立看待的我也看不下去了。诗词就算白话翻译也请完整翻译下来，或者你看一下小学翻译教案也行。按你的这种断章的逻辑，封神榜也只是三句话就把故事写完了的。

《静夜思》明月姑娘在床前脱光了衣服，她的皮肤就像地上的霜一样白，李白抬头看着明月姑娘，低头却又想起了远在故乡的老婆。