Why China's 996 can't do the United States' 955

Author of this article: Zhang Hailong-CODING founder and CEO
Technology entrepreneurs have been working in the field of technology circles and development tools for more than ten years. CODING was founded in 2014 to provide enterprise users with a full set of DevOps R&D management tools, including project management, code hosting, continuous integration, product management, and continuous deployment, so that the entire development process can be implemented in the browser.

There is a question that has been bothering me. In the 2B field, why do Chinese companies work so hard to work overtime, but they still can’t compare with foreign products in terms of products? Although our company does not work a lot of overtime, it still has a much longer working hours compared to similar companies in foreign countries. Recently, in order to catch up with the new version of the continuous deployment product, the relevant team is basically 997. Tencent Cloud, Alibaba Cloud, I have learned that there are more overtime work, and 996 cases are not rare. But if you look at the products of cloud services in China and the United States, obviously foreign ones are still much better than domestic ones. To magnify this question a bit, in the context of the trade war between China and the United States, "Why China's 996 can't do the United States' 955?". We look at this problem from three aspects.

the quality of Chinese IT practitioners work?

Compared with the first-tier cities in China, I think the professional level of the practitioners is not bad. I worked in Silicon Valley ten years ago. A large number of Indian aunts’ titles are Principal Engineers. This is probably one of the reasons why I decided to return to China. In recent years, there have been a large number of engineers who went to the United States after working in China for a period of time, and returned to China after working in the United States for a period of time. I feel that in terms of the quality of practitioners, high-end talents are similar on both sides. . In terms of quantity, 1616cd52f8a4f7 junior practitioners must be more . Therefore, in daily sense, the overall quality of China is not as high as that of foreign countries. I think this is an illusion in the scope of business we are discussing.

However, domestic practitioners are indeed lacking in professionalism. This can be seen from the resume. Even if there are some very senior engineers in China, their resumes are unqualified, from content to format. But if you go abroad to recruit, no matter how bad your level is, your resume is very beautiful. The training abroad on how to write a resume is quite mature and it is worth learning.

In addition, when it comes to understanding the relationship between oneself and the company, there are generally more emotions in China, while foreign countries are more rational. This point is too big to expand, we have to start from the culture. But in any case, I think this difference only affects the management method and should not have a big impact on the quality of output.

IT practitioners in China not working hard enough?

The problem is obvious, but I still want to talk about it. Every time around 10pm, I take a taxi downstairs from the company. Didi tells you to line up for No. 101. This is the case in first-tier cities. Shenzhen Science and Technology Park is just a microcosm. We say 996 is just a pronoun, it may be 10-10-6, but at least I have never seen a private IT company is 955. In addition, a large number of domestic companies have to deal with public affairs during non-working hours, that is, the public and private are not so clear. So that the enterprise WeChat will give you a report every week, telling you what time the official conversation will be handled this week. Isn't it a minority of people who post two or three o'clock in the morning in the circle of friends?

Even so, compared to other industries, the IT industry may have the shortest working hours. The construction industry, factory manufacturing, basically take a Spring Festival a year. There are so many people in China, and everyone has 24 hours a day. China’s GDP growth over the years is piled up by time. However, the leverage ratio of heap time is getting lower and lower, so the GDP growth rate has dropped rapidly.

the strategy of China's 2B company feasible?

If the product is not well done, if it is not a human problem or a problem of commitment, then probably only a problem of direction remains. Let's first look at a set of screenshots:

Comparing the homepages of several cloud vendors at home and abroad, the problem is actually quite obvious. The home page is the facade, represents your image, and represents what information you want to deliver to customers . U.S. manufacturers are basically talking about products and technologies, while Chinese cloud manufacturers are basically engaged in sales promotion, and "diet is ugly." I always think that as a professional service provider for enterprises, it is a shame to participate in events like Double Eleven. I have never seen that American corporate service company participate in Black Friday. Do you think Alibaba Cloud's homepage looks more and more like Taobao in terms of visual perception? Come from the heart! How to build a professional image like this? Without a professional image, the added value will not increase, so the business is getting harder and harder. "IBM, Oracle, Microsoft, Google, AWS, Alibaba Cloud, Tencent Cloud, Huawei Cloud" these LOGOs when you see these logos, I believe that the inner feelings are different. I think this is the gap.

's strong operation approach can indeed gain more customers, and other manufacturers have to follow up, which leads to the current situation: 1616cd52f8a7bd cloud computing industry driven by operations with Chinese characteristics. If the business is driven by sales, the leverage is the lowest, followed by operations, with the highest product being . So if you look at sales-driven companies, there are often many people, but the per capita output value is very low, such as real estate and software outsourcing. However, product-driven companies/businesses often have super-high per capita output values, such as WeChat. Another example is the foreign Atlassian (typical product JIRA), which currently has a market value of US$100 billion, 3,600 employees, and an average market value of US$35 million per capita. This company has no sales.

When we are doing performance appraisal, there is a saying: You will get what you appraise. To enlarge it a little more, "whatever this society rewards, you will get what." I have thought about it and thought that the core here is not a problem of supply, but a problem of demand . The current domestic IT environment essentially encourages 60-point products and does not pay attention to 80-point or 100-point products. One effort can make a product 60 points; two effort can make a product 80 points; but 10 energy can achieve 100 points. If there is not enough positive incentives, no one will make a 100-point product. Therefore, there are many 60-point products on the Chinese market, but few 80-point products and no 100-point products. Those who have done an enterprise-level project ordering, bidding and bidding all understand that whether the product can win customers is at most only half of the factor. Moreover, many companies are currently pursuing usability and do not have such a strong demand for quality.

After all, this problem is not an IT industry problem. I think it is more obvious in the construction industry. China has built more houses in 30 years than others in 200 years, and you can imagine the quality of this house. Every time I go to a veteran capitalist country, I see other people's office buildings, although it has been hundreds of years, but that kind of quality is rare in China. AWS, the global cloud computing leader, was founded in 2006, and Atlassian, which I just mentioned, was founded in 2002. product driver is that the previous investment is very large and the time is very long. We chase after the pursuit of short, flat and fast, and the quality is also difficult to do well.

In addition, too much demand for individualization and low willingness to pay are also major factors affecting the strategy of 2B companies. Chinese companies have too many individual demands, leading many corporate service providers to customize customers. The reason for this problem is that the management of Chinese enterprises is not standardized and the boss culture is too heavy. But I believe this problem is improving, and various tools, including corporate WeChat/DingTalk, are forcing the standardization and standardization of the management of small and medium-sized enterprises. The willingness to pay is also, and improvement can be seen, but it is still very low. Among the ten active users, only one is paid. If you use the product and still do not pay, the company can only find other ways to make money.

All of the above have made it impossible to slowly polish products in this domestic environment, and will basically die on the road. Therefore, we can only force the good to be a prostitute, pollute first, and then treat. Although Chinese companies may invest more people, regardless of the quality of engineers, there is still a big gap between the same amount of manpower for one product and two products at the same time. China's 996 can't beat the US's 955. It is still a question of path choice. The leverage ratio between the two paths is too large.

Including giant cloud vendors, I believe that starting from the boss, very clear that good products are king, but practice is very difficult. . If you look at the revenue composition of major cloud vendors, you will know if there are any. How much is really the income brought by the product. Both speed and quality are required, and short-term benefits are still reluctant. Is it really possible to have both?

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