The third year after the epidemic: technical management and teamwork under the changing times!

The third year after the epidemic is also the third year that the digital transformation has been accelerated. In the past three years, the only thing that has not stopped is the upgrading of technology, which has also triggered a re-examination of the working model at home and abroad. The remote office model of Work from home has become popular abroad, and it has also been practiced in China due to the impact of the epidemic.

Does the telecommuting model make team management easier or more complex? What kind of help will the remote office software represented by Tencent Conference bring to the efficient communication of enterprises?

Tencent Cloud TVP gathered 20 senior industry experts to launch the "Redefining Leadership" TVP technical management closed-door meeting, sharing the common scenarios in technical management with big names, and using thematic debates to find classic speculations in technical management. On March 27, with the theme of "Change in the Times and Original Intention", TVP celebrities took the participants to traverse the road of change in technology management in the digital age and the original intention after thousands of miles.

Changes and constants of technical managers in the post-epidemic era

Shen Gan, Vice President of Youzan Technology and TVP of Tencent Cloud, is an industry veteran who has been deeply involved in the technology field for more than 20 years. He has accompanied the development and change of technology and the continuous growth of team size. He also plays a sharing role in many technical organizations. . Starting from his own experience, he shared the theme of "Changes and Changes of Technical Managers in the Post-epidemic Era" to the participants from four aspects.

Post-pandemic impact on the industry

At the beginning of sharing, Mr. Shen Gan first showed you two old photos:

The left picture above shows the Normandy landings, and the right picture shows the Dunkirk evacuation. The meaning behind these two pictures also implies the general status quo of Internet companies in the past two years, from the general "living well" in the past dividend period to the current primary pursuit of "survival". Behind this is not only the impact of the epidemic on the entire industry, but also the regulatory and normative policies that industries such as real estate, Internet finance, education, and platform e-commerce have experienced after experiencing a stage of "barbaric growth". In this context, we all face some new challenges.

Mr. Shen Gan shared some of his thoughts after the changes in the general environment. He said that the current underlying paradigm of the Chinese economy has been reset. In the past few decades, my country has been making plans around economic priorities, driving social progress through economic development, and has achieved world-renowned results.

After entering the new era, the country has also begun to adjust the underlying logic of economic development, began to pursue sustainable development, adjusted income levels to promote social equity, and increased investment in data security, autonomy and control. Under the current critical development stage, the old economic model is suppressed and the new economic model is supported. According to the ideal state, by 2030, there will be 1 billion people in China whose living standard exceeds that of Shanghai today, and the per capita disposable income exceeds 8 million. From this perspective, the engine that drives development has undergone tremendous changes, and the way we think about problems will also undergo earth-shaking changes.

What is technical leadership

Returning to the topic of this sharing, Mr. Shen Gan explained the terminology of technical leadership to everyone:

Leadership refers to the ability to make full use of human resources and objective conditions within the jurisdiction to accomplish the required things at the least cost and improve the efficiency of the entire group. It is the influence of an individual to guide the entire group, and technical leadership refers to the influence of the Team Leader on the entire technical team.

Mr. Shen Gan shared some very classic technical management models, including the hexagonal model of leadership, technical strength, system construction ability, personnel management ability, and cultural construction ability; he also included the Weinberg technical leadership who had a deep influence on him. MOI model, etc. However, many technical managers often encounter various problems in practice. The reason is that they have not really grasped the key to the problem, but only mechanically apply the model theory. In Mr. Shen Gan's view, when the business environment is undergoing tremendous changes, the key to technical leadership is how to lead the team across discontinuities.

Refactoring technology management

Although the word "involution" became popular only two years ago, in the past ten years or so, China's Internet has become a very typical era of involution. Everyone has done things extremely well, and then has become more and more It's getting more complicated and harder to move forward. Under such an era background, new requirements are put forward for technology management. How to build super (infinitely) high delivery efficiency of the technical team has become the greatest value of technical management.

The underlying logic of the big environment has undergone fundamental changes, triggering the adjustment of the company's business, and ultimately bringing about the inherent requirements for changing the management model of the technical team. Mr. Shen Gan analyzed that most R&D teams evolved from associated businesses. The complexity of the business has brought about an increase in management costs and challenges in collaboration. For the technical side, it is relatively passive. .

Mr. Shen Gan referred to the theory in Chen Chunhua's "Collaboration", and dismantled in detail what the R&D team had done in terms of specialization, processization, empowerment and activation of individuals, as well as some of the technical concepts or cultures it represented. The method, in the final analysis, is still improving efficiency.

Under such a development model, the priority of delivery efficiency is the core of the R&D paradigm, and the pursuit has become the core of business development, which can easily lead to delivery efficiency becoming the card point of business development. Therefore, in the new scenario, the core of technology management should be changed from the blind pursuit of delivery efficiency to cost reduction and efficiency enhancement, low-cost trial and error, from the pursuit of extreme speed to the pursuit of fast and accurate.

How to do it fast enough? Mr. Shen Gan put forward the key to starting from the three aspects of collaboration, service and empowerment. At the same time, he also took Youzan's actual business as an example, and achieved a 50% reduction in work complexity, a 50% increase in delivery efficiency, and a 50% increase in release efficiency. , the concurrency can improve the remarkable results by nearly 70%.

How to be accurate enough? This direction is also on the road of exploration. Mr. Shen Gan also mentioned a number of key directions such as business visualization, API standardization, and capability domainization.

Return to the essence and re-examine the value of technology

Speaking of the nature of technology, Mr. Shen Gan also recommended Brian Arthur's best-selling book of the same name, and some of the views in it coincide with the current changes. Technology is actually the driving force behind development, by capturing phenomena and applying them. Changes in the underlying logic, market changes, and business adjustments are actually forcing technology to adjust the underlying paradigm of development.

At the end of the sharing, Mr. Shen Gan also proposed a model of the development stage of the technical team, and recommended that everyone divide it into their own technical team to diagnose the pulse.

Tencent Conference Helps Enterprises Communicate Efficiently

Chen Jiansheng, vice president of Tencent Cloud and head of Tencent Conference Technology, brought a keynote speech titled "Tencent Conference Helps Enterprises Efficient Communication" to the participants. From the technology behind Tencent Conference, connecting people and people, people and space, software and hardware Integration and other aspects reveal how the current domestic video conferencing applications with over 200 million users are made.

Tencent Conference, Helping Efficient Communication

Since its launch at the end of 2019, the number of registered users of Tencent Meetings has exceeded 200 million, covering more than 220 countries and regions around the world, and more than 4 billion online meetings are held each year. In addition to the massive traffic favored by the B/C ends, Tencent Conference also provided technical support in many national conferences such as the Canton Fair and the World Artificial Intelligence Conference.

Up to now, Tencent Conference has achieved full coverage of teamwork, business negotiation, remote recruitment, online training, salon summits, etc., to meet the needs of different industries such as retail, education, Internet, and medical care.

Based on Tencent Cloud's global coverage in more than 70 countries and regions, the deployment of more than 2,800 accelerated nodes, and Tencent's professional, extreme, and open audio and video technology, users can experience stable, clear, and smooth audio and video conferences anytime, anywhere. Users can join the conference through mini programs, desktop terminals, mobile devices, etc., and support 7 major platforms and multi-device intercommunication.

After several years of polishing, Tencent Conference has built a sophisticated real-time audio and video communication control mechanism. On the basis of traditional congestion control algorithms, our engineers use strategies such as cluster analysis to optimize different network congestion environments. For enterprise environments with special network conditions, intelligent flow control is used to adjust, so that users can obtain the best user experience without perception.

Because real-time audio and video communication has high requirements for network quality, the actual service quality of mobile Internet cannot be guaranteed anytime, anywhere. Starting from the user's experience, Tencent Conference models the user's QoE based on the smallest perceptible difference (JND), and realizes the adaptive adjustment of the parameters of each module. Improve the resistance to harsh network environments and ensure highly reliable network communication transmission.

AI technology provides new technical ideas for audio and video communication. Improve weak network image quality through video super-resolution. At the same time, it combines light correction and re-lighting technology to improve the front and background fusion experience. In addition, Tencent Conference adopts deep learning technology and is the first to provide innovative experiences such as virtual background, picture-in-picture, same-frame mode, beauty, and eye contact. Through the AI algorithm, the speaker's voice is enhanced in a targeted manner, and the background interference noise is suppressed.

The ultimate research and development of H.265 and H.265 SCC standards, combined with high-definition low code and perceptual coding technology, still maintains high image quality at low code rates. Through scene detection and recognition, the encoding scheme is adapted to the scene to obtain a better video and screen sharing experience. Layered coding is performed through SVC coding technology to adapt to different network environments.

Combining the above-mentioned network and AI technologies, Tencent Meeting helps provide the best audio and video communication effects for users in different network environments.

Connecting people and breaking the space distance

As a professional cloud video conference application technology leader, Mr. Chen Jiansheng introduced to us how Tencent Conference connects people and breaks the meeting space through the five "meetings" of Tencent Conference:

Conference organization: The conference registration setting is simple, and it supports private chat hosts, whitelist settings, and easy access to the waiting room.
Collaboration: support PPT sharing, remote interactive annotation, multiple sharing modes, support zoom and "picture-in-picture" mode, etc.
Meeting Arrangement: Supports meeting recording, automatic meeting minutes, cloud editing, and other in-meeting and post-meeting arrangements.
Meeting co-creation: Supports functions such as remote control, real-time subtitles, and file transfer during meetings.
Meeting management: Support hybrid cloud deployment, protect enterprise information security, and flexibly adjust bandwidth deployment.

In addition, Tencent Conference launched a webinar product form at the end of last year, which can distinguish three identities of host, guest and audience, and supports up to 50,000 participants. In addition, Tencent Meeting also supports functions such as customized conference details pages, customized unified virtual backgrounds, personalized invitation cards, and customized domain names to help companies spread their brands.

Connecting people and space, integrating hardware ecology

Mr. Chen Jiansheng introduced that the integration and interoperability of cloud conference applications and the long-established traditional video conference hardware is very important. The conference room connector of Tencent Conference has achieved intercommunication with H.323/SIP conference room equipment and is compatible with Polycom (Poly) , Cisco, Huawei, Yealink, ZTE, Zhongchuang and other manufacturers of H.323/SIP hardware conference room equipment (this content comes from Tencent conference official website https://meeting.tencent.com/support-doc-detail/205/ ), retain the investment value of the company's original hardware assets, activate the expansion of traditional video conferencing applications to cloud services, let the company's conference rooms go to the cloud, and stimulate new vitality in different meeting spaces!

On the other hand, Tencent Conference continues to build an open and connected hardware ecosystem. At present, there are more than 20 hardware cooperative brands, and more than 50 hardware products have passed the Tencent Teana device certification. Let Tencent Conference Rooms combine with certified hardware devices to flexibly adapt to different conference scenarios such as large, medium, small, and super large training rooms. At the same time, Tencent Conference will continue to enrich the product forms of conference room solutions, so that enterprises have more choices to recycle and upgrade their personalized conference spaces.

Open and share, help digital upgrade

Mr. Chen Jiansheng said that Tencent Conference has provided rich API interface calls for enterprise IT, system integrators, and SaaS service providers to realize the connection between industry applications, enterprise office platforms and Tencent Conference.

A variety of applications can be extended to meet the needs of other applications in the collaboration process and improve efficiency. At the same time, adhering to science and technology for good, let technology and public welfare go hand in hand, Tencent Conference will open up the Teana AI voice technology, a personalized AI voice-enhanced listening algorithm specially created for hearing-impaired users, so that hearing-impaired users can not only hear clearly, but also "see" clear". The Tencent conference team will continue to improve its own technology and capabilities, and continue to open up and cooperate with the ecosystem through technologies, platforms, interfaces, etc., to help more enterprises realize the digital upgrade of online communication.

Summit Debate: Changes and Changes in Team Management in the Era of Remote Office

This roundtable session set up a splendid debate on the topic of "Changes and Changes in Team Management in the Era of Remote Office". The Zhengfang Yuan Universe team held the view that "remote office is easier for team management", while the negative Zhoutian TVP team held the view that "remote office is more complicated to team management", and they had a fierce confrontation.

Zhengfangyuan Universe Team: Le Yongbin, CIO of TATA Wooden Door; Li Ming, Partner of Layabox; Cheng Congchao, Senior Chief Engineer of Intel and Technical Director of Cloud Innovation Center; Wang Yeliang, Vice President of Tributary Technology.

Anti-party Zhoutian TVP team: Shen Xin, senior vice president of digitalization of HEYTEA before the first debate; Tan Zhongyi, vice chairman of the Open Atom Open Source Foundation and TOC; third debate Yang Zhentao, R&D manager of vivo; fourth debate Apache Software Foundation Member Guo Wei.

argumentation

Zheng Fang Yi argues Le Yongbin

The focus of this discussion is on telecommuting, and it is inevitable to review the traditional centralized office model. After the first industrial revolution, factory production replaced the family workshop-style production model, and the specialized division of labor began to gradually emerge. Since then, management ideas have begun to gradually demonstrate and iterate based on this division of labor. Since then, both the second industrial revolution and the third industrial revolution have revolved around the centralized office model produced under the specialization of labor. The focus of centralized office has a basis, that is, the monitoring of the process. Therefore, all the methods and strategies in the past paid too much attention to process monitoring and required centralized office work. First, they were afraid of the remote office model. Second, there were no conditions for telecommuting. This was a management anxiety.

From the perspective of managers, they would naturally reject the novelty of telecommuting at first, but their pace has been gaining popularity. From Maslow's theory of needs, when the satisfaction that human beings pursue gradually evolves to high-end demands, the demand for remote office is irresistible, and for individuals, the demand for change in this office model is stronger. In the face of this general trend, managers' cognition and methods must follow the trend in order to empathize, create and win-win with team members.

It can be briefly summarized as follows: First, the specialization and refined division of labor in the era of intelligence have created the demand for remote office; second, the uncertainty of the market and the environment, and the requirements of enterprise management efficiency and cost have stimulated this communication, The need for change in collaborative and cross-regional methods; third, the innovation of technology and tools is sufficient to ensure a low-cost and high-efficiency telecommuting platform and the sustainability of the company's operations; fourth, personnel capabilities, quality conditions, and self-improvement demands Call on managers to pay attention to individuals and highlight individual values. To sum up, we believe that it is necessary to embrace remote working, which can free managers from complicated work affairs, better focus on goals and efficiency, improve the performance of the entire team, and achieve a win-win situation for enterprises and individuals.

The opposing side argues against Shen Xin

The topic of this debate is the complexity of remote work for team management, and the word team management itself has its focus. Team management is not only about completing the work, but also has the attributes of empowerment and moral education. Paying attention to the growth of the team is also a very important part. If we only discuss the efficient completion of KPIs, we cannot meet the core requirements of team management and pay attention to the growth of the team. Whether it is cultural inheritance or teaching by example, the interaction of every detail is very important, and this is what is lacking in remote work. Building team chemistry through telecommuting only creates more complexity.

In addition, new tools must be introduced for remote work. I have installed at least four or five sets of different software on my mobile phone to participate in remote meetings of various companies. At the same time, I have to train the team and even face the challenges of network security. is the complexity.

So let's repeat our point, telecommuting makes team management more complicated. Therefore, we are not denying remote work. To some extent, complexity is a good thing. Complexity can bring a lot of refined requirements. Once done well, we can bring huge benefits. Just like a complex industrial robot must be able to do more things than a simple hammer, complexity is also an improvement to our management level. Simplicity is not the purpose, but the purpose is to generate value. If complexity can bring value, we should face this complexity together and adapt to this situation, instead of blindly thinking that simplicity is good.

Attack and defense

Li Ming's second argument

The argument of the opposite side is off-topic. It is not comparable to talk about remote work without talking about offline work. Without comparison, it is simpler or more complicated. This is the first question.

The second is the issue of network security. Who dares to say that there is absolute security in the Internet? Safety is relative, choose well-known office products, I think most of them are safe. But if you say absolute safety, no one dares to guarantee it, and there is no such product. So we can't attribute these problems to telecommuting, because it's not just telecommuting.

Third, telecommuting does not conflict with teaching by example and training. Many people fall into a misunderstanding. It seems that the advantages or disadvantages of online office do not appear in offline office scenarios, which is not right in itself. Today's debate is a point that needs to be compared. Team management is a problem to be faced both online and offline. We should start from the scene to make comparisons, rather than discuss the advantages and disadvantages from the scene.

In team management, the worry that online office will be slack due to lack of supervision is actually a common problem of management. From the actual experience, in fact, only a small number of grass-roots employees have this problem, and it can be improved through communication reminders and the application of office tools. Most management and senior employees with high professionalism rarely have problems unconsciously. If it occurs, it is basically due to the distribution, coordination of management work, or the unclear and opaque content of the work, which is caused by problems in these aspects, and these problems will inevitably occur in the management process of daily office, including our offline office. meet.

Team management, I think a very important core is management, because management is actually the establishment of rules, and the implementation of rules is relatively easier to clarify and implement. It is necessary to understand the business goals of the superiors, determine the long-term nodes and near-term nodes of the work goals, sort out, quantify, and allocate work, etc. It is more important and complex in daily work. When working offline, many companies ignore the use of office tools. In the process of telecommuting, face-to-face trust will be reduced, and normative processes will be significantly strengthened. The management aids of the company make the online office, management and management process more transparent and clear, which will make the management of the entire team easier.

On the contrary, offline office will bring some more complicated problems, and online office does not exist. For example, in a city like Beijing, it often takes more than an hour for a one-way journey. The attendance problem caused by the commuting problem itself increases the complexity. Even HR will often encounter cases such as missing talents due to inappropriate workplaces. In fact, there are quite a few cases. Online office can break the limitation of space, and enable talents who are far away in the same city or in different places to achieve work collaboration through remote office. As we all know, the work efficiency of top talents and high-quality talents will be greatly increased or multiplied, and the management cost will be greatly reduced. Telecommuting can build and bring together a national talent pool, and the introduction of high-quality talents will also make management easier.

In the end, I think that this debate has no time constraints, not only the current online office, but in the future, with the development and maturity of technology, perhaps in the future metaverse, immersive online office and offline Office is not much different. The cross-regional advantages of online office will become more obvious, and as online office tools and concepts become more and more mature, the management of online office will definitely become easier and simpler.

The second argument against Tan Zhongyi

First, in the speech of Fang Fangyou, which is more complicated, offline office and remote office are opposed. Our point of view is that remote office makes team management more complicated, and does not deny the necessity of offline office. So both are necessary, and the coexistence of both creates complexity in team management.

Second, online precepts and deeds cannot replace offline communication. Because offline communication can build a sense of trust, it can better coach newcomers, and it can give the newcomers a sense of warmth. For example, in some teams that implement online office, there is only one person in a certain city. Although he can also participate in the team online, it is often difficult to retain such a person because he cannot touch the team. A sense of belonging.

Third, compared with the grassroots soldiers, the management does not need to be offline, but it is wrong. Many large companies require high-level engineers to work in the headquarters, or need a lot of time to travel to the headquarters, such as Tencent in Shenzhen. In this form, online office cannot be completely solved. Both offline and online have their own advantages and cannot replace each other. This is the problem of complexity.

Finally, I would like to emphasize my point of view that remote working makes team management more complicated, which is a real problem today. We are still in the process of further development of IT technology, and the team quality and team ability are still in the process of continuous improvement. The domestic IT team is far from being comparable to the first-class remote office team in Silicon Valley. Perhaps some domestic cases can be cited, and it is true that the offline office scene can be separated, but from the overall point of view, the complexity will still exist for a long time. In terms of team recruitment and retention, telecommuting requires team members with high quality, strong ability and good communication skills, which increases the pressure on recruitment exponentially, and also requires extremely high leadership level of team managers. It will bring about an increase in complexity.

Square Three Debate Cheng Congchao

The logic and scenario examples put forward by the opposing defense friends, in my personal experience, just become simpler rather than complicated. First, it turns out that we all have meetings offline, and everyone can understand what it means by giving each other a look. But many times, the PUA phenomenon in the workplace is caused by a tacit look. A look from the team leader may be good or bad, but in the online scene of remote office, the output of these workplaces It can be measured by quantitative indicators, but it makes it easier to be sophisticated.

Second, the loss of employees, most of the time, has nothing to do with whether the team works remotely. Either the money is not enough, or the boss is not satisfied. I don't think it has much to do with telecommuting and the lack of care for employees.

Third, the so-called high-level engineers often need to spend a long time on business trips to communicate with the team in the headquarters. You can think about it carefully. How much of this process is ineffective communication? Many managers of our generation are still in a state of panic when they can’t see people, but now the post-90s and 00s were born in the Internet age, and the current technical capabilities have greatly weakened the concept of space. The mode of online meetings is different from offline meetings. Most online meetings are quickly aligned and very focused, while many offline meetings are often just for meetings.

Fourth, from cloud services to cloud native will bring architectural complexity, so why do we need to do cloud native? Because that's where the trend is. In the same way, the transition from centralized office to remote office will be slightly slower at the beginning, but in the long run, this is also an inevitable development.

To sum up our point of view: first, the evolution of technology will make remote working mainstream, and the scene of working in the Metaverse may be realized in the future; second, from the practice since the epidemic, Internet companies have basically not been affected by too many black swans. Influence and cooperation are no problem; third, telecommuting can realize a horizontal expansion structure for future growth of the enterprise and provide better guarantee for future growth. Thanks!

Three arguments against Yang Zhentao

In my opinion, there are quite a few bugs in the case explanations put forward by Fang Fangyou. For example, why does cloud computing bring us the same cost of managing 100 machines as it is to manage one machine? It is because the complexity behind it is shielded, and the user feels the simplicity, not that the complexity does not exist. Second, it is not necessary to open an invalid meeting, but this is a mechanism problem of team management, not a scene problem of the workspace. If it is moved online, communication may still be ineffective. Third, the case of remote team work abroad attracting global talents is not because they think remote work is simpler in team management, but because they have managed to solve the complex problem of team management and are ahead of the curve.

We also wish to emphasize three points:

First, management is a practical science, and management must be done through interaction with people. I believe that no matter whether you have read a lot of management master books, you are the same in your own management practice. Management itself is not a simple thing. If someone thinks that management is a very simple thing, I believe that many people will become management masters, but why is there a pyramid structure in the enterprise?

Second, based on this background, telecommuting makes management interaction more complicated and difficult, which affects our final management effect. Different management modes will not solve the complexity of management itself, but to advance management science itself. The more management practice and the more accumulated experience, the better. And not only that, the distance problem of telecommuting brings its own complexity, causing the two complexities to be superimposed on each other.

Third, good management must be simple, but the reality is cruel. Before technical students start to write code, it is very important to analyze and design this step, which is precisely where efficient communication is required. Telecommuting may bring a little time for immersive coding, but it is difficult to communicate as smoothly as offline centralized office in point-to-point efficient communication, not to mention that if there are bear children at home during telecommuting, it may be better to go to work in the company.

Finally, to sum up, in management psychology, in addition to individual management psychology, there are group management psychology and organizational management psychology. During the transition from remote office to centralized office, the changes in group psychology, organizational design and organizational culture will be much more challenging than centralized office. Under the same effect, remote office will be more difficult and complex. powerful. Therefore, on behalf of my own party, I also think that remote working will be more complicated for team management, thank you!

Positive Defense Summary Le Yongbin

The various logical problems of the opposing debaters have been summed up and ignored two basic problems: the first ignores the concern of remote office for the superiority, convenience and sustainability of centralized office. The second is that the change and improvement of management thinking need to be carried out simultaneously. If the previous management and control thinking is adhered to, the complexity is inevitable, but this is not a problem of telecommuting, but a problem of the managers themselves.

To sum up, if we say that our remote work is simpler for the management team, there are the following aspects:

First, our management mentality should be changed from this monitoring mentality to a service mentality, changing the previous management thinking inertia of process monitoring. The second is to focus on performance and goal achievement. To highlight the value management of individual autonomy, it is necessary for him to break through the management of autonomy. Third, telecommuting is simpler. In fact, there are four key words, which are what I have been practicing in the process of team management: trust, goal, method and care.

Summary of the opposing side's defense by Shen Xin

Let me reiterate, my point of view is not that on-site work makes team management easier, but remote work makes team management more complex. Please don't oppose remote work and offline work. Both are needed at this stage. We ask adults not to do multiple-choice questions. What does it mean if they need both? More complex.

On the other hand, we are talking about the present, and our topic today is not going to be easier, but now. Therefore, in the future, brain-computer implantation or new technology may indeed make things simpler, and there will even be special discussions and books to help everyone manage remote teams more conveniently, but this is not our topic today. Because the other party has been entangled with the wrong logic on the details, so I think we still need to reiterate our point of view, what is team management? Not only efficiency, but also things related to human nature, such as team management, organizational design, and individualized teaching, must be more complicated.

I heard the speech of the other party's friend, and I feel that remote management only makes part of the management easier. We can't generalize and amplify the simplicity of a small department to the entire organization. This derivation process is unreasonable. So we have no way to infer that telecommuting makes team management easier. Let's repeat, complexity is not a bad thing, but the derivation must be correct. Finally, I hope that the other party's debaters will be more confident, let go of your obsessions, and read with me. Remote office makes team management more complicated, thank you all!

Conclusion

Four arguments against Guo Wei

Hello everyone, I have three management experiences that are directly related to telecommuting, which also echoes some of the views of the three players in front of us. I just share these three experiences with you.

The first experience was as a researcher at Lenovo, with teams in China and the United States. In this experience, telecommuting does not belong to the same time zone as we discussed today, but also means that we have cross-time zone collaboration and communication issues with the United States and Europe. This is a typical remote office scenario. The complexity of management is reflected in all aspects. American employees submit code and do document handover, and Chinese employees continue to develop. Similar work in the local team can be solved with only a morning meeting. Not to mention a lot of detailed reviews to be done in the middle, which doesn’t need to be so complicated in offline scenarios.

The second experience was in Analysys as CTO. There are R&D centers in Beijing and Changsha, and the cost of remote communication in the two places is also very high. The so-called tools such as OKR and formal communication can quantify some indicators and problems, but It is difficult for you to understand the morale of the team and the status of the personnel through the online scene, and you can only run back and forth between the two places. The opposing party only saw the formal communication between teams, but did not see the importance of informal communication as irreplaceable.

The third experience was at the Apache Foundation, and I saw something even more radical. Many open source companies are distributed companies, with employees in different cities across the country, and now they are expanding their business in different cities overseas. The teams of these companies naturally collaborate remotely, and their technical capabilities and collaboration levels are very high. Even so, everyone still feels that communication is not enough. In the online scene, the use of VR to draw the architecture diagram looks very metaverse, but the current implementation effect is very unsatisfactory. This is only a collaboration problem in online office, not to mention the management problem.

To sum up, telecommuting has indeed made management more complicated, and it has also brought more challenges to managers. I also hope that there will be more advanced technologies and management methods to make this easier in the future, but the answer to the current question is Obvious.

The Four Debates of the Four Squares Wang Yeliang

First of all, please note that telecommuting or centralized office is not something we can decide, but is caused by objective reasons. What we are thinking about now is how to make the complex simple in the remote mode. The second point I want to remind everyone is that the team managers on both sides of the debate are all about the same age. The perception of managers in their 40s is different from that of the young people in the team after 95. We think that we drink together after get off work. Chuanchu is to enhance the relationship, and people think that we are occupying their off-get off work time.

So I will state from the following three dimensions:

First, cost. The epidemic has caused many companies that are entities, including startups, to pay a very large operating cost. However, if the company works remotely, the demand for office buildings, parking lots and surrounding facilities will be much lower, the cost can be controlled very ideally, and a lot of money can be saved. Especially in first-tier cities, the cost of venue rental is sky-high.

Second, office efficiency. The determinant of the efficiency issue is not telecommuting or local work, it depends entirely on the experience of the manager. I have no remote management experience. I can manage the current team to a certain extent with only one year of experience. At least I can manage it better than some inexperienced people, so I personally think it does not matter.

Third, the spirit. The best thing about telecommuting is to prevent involution, you can spend more time with your family and go to the gym to exercise. The long commute time on the way to the centralized office often greatly affects the happiness. If there is no spiritual satisfaction and happiness, where will efficiency come from?

Witnessed by all the participants and TVP experts in this session, the positive view "Remote Office Makes Team Management Simpler" won the final victory, and the negative view, Mr. Shen Xin, won the highest vote in the audience and won the MVP.

The host of this session, Shen Cen, senior product manager of Tencent Conference, said that in the debate between the two sides, I felt the teachers' broad vision, open thinking and keen perspective. TVP teachers put aside the speculation of "remote office is easier for team management", combined with their years of practical experience summed up, from the shallower to the deeper, frankly and passionately, brought a show to the audience and friends. A feast of ideas.

Epilogue

When writing was invented, the distance between ancient people and modern people was close. When the code is written, the distance between the present and the future is close. With the maturity and popularization of emerging technologies such as cloud computing, 5G, VR/AR, and Web 3, remote working may become more and more mainstream in the future. The complexity of team management will eventually find an effective way out, no matter whether the office space is online or offline.

From the very beginning of its establishment, TVP hopes to "influence the world with technology", so that technology can benefit everyone, and practice the original intention and original intention of science and technology for good. As TVP celebrities have said, perhaps the team management of remote office still lacks experience sharing and book output, but who knows if such a collision of ideas will inspire more interested people?