Science and technology creator Jiang Yongqing, chairman of SUSE Greater China: true open source must have the ingenuity of polishing technology and continue to create social value

Jiang Yongqing, Chairman of SUSE Greater China, Jiang Yongqing joined SUSE in 2012 and has served as General Manager of North Asia and APJ Sales Vice President, and will be the Chairman of Greater China in 2021. From 2007 to 2012, Jiang Yongqing served as the general manager of RSA Greater China, a subsidiary of EMC; from 1995 to 2000, as the general manager of Sybase China; from 2000 to 2007, he worked in Sun Microelectronics, Network Alliance and Hyperion (Hyperion) and other companies as the general manager of the industry or China; from 1984 to 1995 in the United States Silicon Valley ABB and Sybase engaged in software development.

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In 1982, Jiang Yongqing graduated from the School of Computer Science, Shanghai Jiaotong University, 40 years ago.
Rejecting compliments such as "senior" and "big coffee", he said that he was "just a worker, never started a business, just an IT veteran".
The ferocious epidemic situation in Shanghai has also given the opportunity for "Science and Technology" to accompany the IT veteran to recall the 40 years of experience.

Jiang Yongqing, a junior high school student who fell in love with repairing machines, was a smart boy when he was a child. When he was in the second grade of junior high school, he was selected by his teacher to learn how to repair electric motors at Shanggang No. 5 Factory. Dismantling an old motor and calculating how to arrange the coils according to the degree of magnetization of the steel sheet was considered a technical task at the time. The classmates who went together were eliminated one after another and went home. Only Jiang Yongqing, who "can repair a motor from beginning to end", stayed behind and became partners with the two masters to undertake all the repair work.
After a few months, Jiang Yongqing was fascinated by repairing motors and completely lost his interest in reading. It was not until later that he found out that many differential and trigonometry knowledge related to electrical engineering in the work process "doesn't understand" at all. Willing to go back and read.
This study went to Shanghai Jiaotong University majoring in computer science.

The earliest outsourcing team in China took the initiative to ask Ying to talk business with foreigners. "To this day, Jiang Yongqing still remembers: when he first arrived in San Francisco, he stood on a building overlooking the passing BMW cars, and a colleague next to him smiled and said, "What are you doing in the daytime? Dream?""
After graduating in 1982, Jiang Yongqing chose to stay in school. Recalling his youth, he added a bit of Versailles-like ridicule in his tone: "I don't think I'm good at reading, so I didn't take the postgraduate entrance examination and worked for a teacher in the management school."
In the early 1980s, there were dozens of personal computers and more than 10 operating systems alone. This management school teacher is a typical "Old Carat (a Shanghai man with experience, high income, and advanced thinking)". Business opportunities led to the establishment of a company, relying on network resources to follow the piecemeal work in Silicon Valley, Jiang Yongqing and several of his classmates inadvertently participated in what may be the earliest IT outsourcing business in China.
After working for a while, the teacher needed to find someone to help him deal with foreigners. Jiang Yongqing took the initiative to ask Ying, "I said that my reading is the worst, but my foreign language is not bad, so I will talk business with foreigners."
In Jiang Yongqing's view in the spring of 2022, this is the most important moment in his life, "My classmates nicknamed me Fatty, they saw me raise my hand and said, 'Is Fatty crazy, why do you do this? '? But I just had a feeling at the time that there was a problem, and I was going to pick it up and solve it - of course, I've made a lot of mistakes in my life (laughs)."
In this way, Jiang Yongqing, who "reads poorly", stepped into Silicon Valley for the first time in 1984 - as a business negotiator. Soon after, the new leader of Jiaotong University took office. Seeing that "these children are so comfortable", Jiang Yongqing was transferred back to China with a paper order.
"When I went to the United States, I felt that the United States was like that, but when I came back to the country, I felt that the life style in front of me was too monotonous."
It was at this time that a business partner I knew in the United States threw an olive branch. In 1979, ABB, a veteran Fortune 500 company, established an office in Beijing, and has been deeply involved in the system engineering of the reform of the State Grid for many years since then. Related technical support positions are in urgent need of interdisciplinary talents who can master relevant technologies and can speak Chinese and understand China. , Jiang Yongqing fully conforms to the post portrait.
More than 30 years later, Jiang Yongqing still remembers how he dealt with the senior engineers in the power system. They were dedicated, diligent, continuous learning, and idealistic. These characteristics also greatly affected Jiang Yongqing's career outlook. "I have learned a lot from these seniors. ".

Returning to the country without troops and horses "I often say to my colleagues: I am always ready for the boss to walk into the office and say: Andy, let's go. I would say: it doesn't matter, you just have to tell me which door to go out from, don't tell me what's wrong. 』
As the first group of young people to venture into the United States after the reform and opening up, the hardships are not enough for outsiders, and the sentence "all has passed" has been light for ten years. It's just that "Science and Technology People" turned to this text in Jiang Yongqing's notes nearly 20 years ago: "After the boss promised me to apply for a green card, one day he suddenly told me that the green card could not be applied. ; When I first came to China, the domestic business environment cannot be described in one or two sentences, and sometimes the projects that we saw could be successful are lost for no apparent reason, and the reasons are not clear.”
The first half of the sentence is the darkest moment of his American life, and the second half of the sentence is one of the multiple crises he encountered after a long-span challenge in his career.
No matter whether he switched to Sybase at ABB or later, Jiang Yongqing has been playing the role of "code farmer + sales" in the first 10 years of Silicon Valley. With the rapid economic development in the Asia-Pacific region, the development potential of the mainland region has attracted the attention of Silicon Valley technology companies, and Sybase is one of them. Jiang Yongqing first became the head of pre-sales in the Asia-Pacific region. Later, Sybase created a special position for him and sent him to the Asia-Pacific headquarters in Hong Kong.
Because of the great risks and the unknown future, his family strongly opposed it, but Jiang Yongqing had a clear understanding of himself. "The technical talent is limited, and it is very painful for me to constantly update the technology. If there is a chance, I would like to develop in other directions." Pressure from all sides, go to office.
In retrospect, this is the most important transition in Jiang Yongqing's career: officially entering the core management team, responsible for developing the world's most potential market. However, what was placed in front of Jiang Yongqing at the time was tons of embarrassment and almost zero resource support: the Asia-Pacific Department originally had an American leader, and the position tailored for Jiang Yongqing, whoever looked at it, had a relationship with this American. The overlapping parts, but the other party has been in business for many years and has deep roots. Jiang Yongqing came by air, without soldiers and horses, and without real power.
"To be honest, I wasn't ready at all back then. Not long ago, my wife and I recalled those days. At that time, I told her that this trip back to China would only take three months, or at most six months. But the situation was beyond imagination. The only way for people who have never worked with me is to talk about the facts, and all the rumors, hearsay and speculation have been blocked by me.” There was chaos horizontally and vertically, and he simply put the “what you see is what you get” in the technical concept. Live learning and applying, whether dealing with people or dealing with various things, everything is based on objective facts as the basis for communication. After several times, it has opened up some new situations.
Tips·"Worker" Jiang Yongqing's management experience· outspoken. For example, when I see a subordinate has advantages and there are some areas that need improvement, I will tell him without compromise.
·Don't be afraid of difficulties in managing sales staff. It is very important for some important sales staff to master big customers and big orders. But if you're intimidated, it's a long way to go for a radical reform plan to materialize.
·Wisdom = reality + ideal + humor, it is all reality, without ideal and humor, it will appear very cold; it is all dream and humor, it can only live in fantasy.
·Do not gang up.
In 1995, Jiang Yongqing officially took office as the general manager of Sybase China. During the five years he was in the military account, Sybase China continued to conquer cities and land, and developed hundreds of customers in finance, telecommunications, government, manufacturing and other industries.
Kechuangren: If you could go back to a certain point in time in the past and give yourself a piece of advice at that time, what would you choose?
Jiang Yongqing: (thought for a moment) First, I want to go back to 1995 and tell myself not to make short-term decisions, and not to make any decisions with side effects for the threshold that I thought at the time would not be over; if there is still a chance, I will tell myself to pay more attention to the details , the devil is in the details, don't be too rambunctious.
People of our generation who go abroad do not have many reference points, and they are very worried that everything from hard work will disappear overnight. In addition, my personality is easy to get nervous, and there will be a lot of unnecessary anxiety when the two are intertwined. A big brother who was two rounds older than me always said to me, "Xiao Jiang, these are nothing." Now I feel ashamed. At that time, I exaggerated a lot of things, but it's not a big deal.
Kechuang people: Technological innovators are generally stressed, facing the unknown, and have no reference in front of them. What advice do you have for younger generations to regulate their emotions?
Jiang Yongqing: Everyone has done better than me. If you insist on giving a suggestion, read more, knowledge can dissolve the unknown, and can eliminate a lot of anxiety about uncertainty.
The new century is gradually approaching, and his career is booming. Jiang Yongqing, who has entered the age of Doubt, has also filled up his expectations for the future. The promotion system within the company can no longer meet his expectations for growth. Desperate, he gradually turned his attention to the outside world, "At that time, entrepreneurship had become a craze. In the early years, there have been business leaders among those who chose to be in business, and a group of upstarts have emerged among young people. It is false to say that they are not interested of".
According to Jiang Yongqing's original plan, he was patient enough to wait for the best opportunity to appear. However, in 2000, Jiang Yongqing's father died of pancreatic cancer. "At the age of 69, it is not very big, and it was a huge blow to me."
His father's unexpected death upsets his mood, and all calm planning is left behind. In the face of major changes, some people are depressed and slumped, some people are excited and try to fight against the mountain of grief in their hearts, Jiang Yongqing belongs to the latter. In the face of the huge rewards promised by a company, he did not think about it and joined it. The end-"Of course he didn't get it."
In more than 6 years, Jiang Yongqing has changed his family many times, but in the wrong direction, even if he makes desperate efforts, it is destined to have little effect. "On a business trip, I was so tired that I slept in the lounge for a while. Later, a former colleague told me that someone saw me, 'I don't want to say hello to you, I think the boss is gone now'. It’s uncomfortable, these people used to be the best people to me. In the end, the more you grow up, the less tolerance for mistakes, a mistake may take many years to correct, and a misjudgment may be wasted in this life.”
After a pause, Jiang Yongqing said with a smile, "But it's not so negative. Now everyone is talking about the crisis of 35 years old. In fact, only 35 years old, what a good age. Time is really fast, in my opinion, it is Mao At the same age as a child, don’t give up on yourself, don’t rush into a so-called stable life, keep growing and learning.”

The second curve of life, from EMC to SUSE
One day in 2007, Jiang Yongqing, who had smoothed the edges and corners and dissipated his vigor, looked at the Offer handed over by the CEO of EMC China with a question mark on his face. Take this opportunity as well.”
It took a while for the CEO to satisfy Jiang Yongqing's curiosity: After RSA was merged into EMC in 2006, EMC China eagerly hoped to open up in the security market, with experience in the security industry and experience as the head of an international IT company in China. Jiang Yongqing naturally entered the field of material selection. The back-to-back team made a thorough understanding from his former colleagues to the partners. When the two sides met, EMC had already made a judgment on Jiang Yongqing.
RSA does not pay little attention to the Chinese market, and has invested a lot of resources based on long-term planning. However, China's security policy has gradually tightened. Although it has not eliminated the living space of foreign companies in one step, the trend is clear at a glance. Jiang Yongqing had to continue to look for opportunities, and his next stop came to Novell, one of the three owners in the history of SUSE.
When he first joined Novell, Jiang Yongqing was a layman in the true sense of "open source", "I don't know what upstream means, and I'm too embarrassed to ask." Fortunately, at that time, Novell had five or six products in the branches of security and management, and the sales of open source products were less than 20%.
As mentioned earlier, SUSE has had 3 owners in history: it was acquired by Novell in 2004, then Novell was acquired by private equity firm Attachmate in 2011, and then Attachmate was acquired by Micro Focus. In late March 2019, when growth investor EQT announced the completion of its acquisition of SUSE from Micro Focus, the industry's largest independent open source company was born. No matter how the parent company changes, the development of SUSE does not seem to be affected and has maintained a rapid growth momentum. By coincidence, Jiang Yongqing seized the promotion opportunity and successively served as the general manager of SUSE North Asia, APJ sales vice president, and chairman of the Greater China region.
The open source layman back then has now become the most powerful open source concept evangelist in China.

Open source concept preacher Kechuangren: In July 2021, he announced to join the openEuler open source community. There was an interesting sentence in the report at that time: "Few people know that in 2020, when Jiang Yongqing joined the openEuler open source community After the idea was reported to the board of directors, it was quickly supported.” This is a bit subtle, can you introduce your idea at the time and why SUSE is so supportive?
Jiang Yongqing: The globalization trend in the field of science and technology and open source has been frustrated, and it is turning into a fragmented and closed. This is a fact that everyone can see. Although I personally hope that technology has no borders, after all, people have to face reality. However, as a German company, SUSE is very pragmatic and respects the Chinese market, so it is willing to invest resources to help the growth and development of the Chinese open source community.
The internal culture of SUSE is also very democratic. Once a product version was upgraded, I asked if I could not have the number 14. The 14 on the Chinese side is as unlucky as the 13 on the western side. As a result, the next version jumped directly from 12 to 15 (laughs). ).
Kechuang people: Relatively mature open source communities, the atmosphere and culture of China's open source communities have a relatively large room for optimization. What is your opinion on this?
Jiang Yongqing: In 2016, "Science and Technology Daily" released a video with the theme of emphasizing the development of hard-core technology: first, we need scientific guidance, maybe it has no commercial value, but we should make it very deep; second , must be ingenious; third, must endure loneliness, do it for a long time. This video made a deep impression on me. I think the open source community should have such a spirit as support, and everyone should work together to create the best and most exciting music. The so-called commercialization of open source means that performers and orchestras use their own methods to create Showing these pieces of music and seeing who plays the best can attract the audience to buy tickets.
Whether it's composing or performing, it requires ingenuity, to win it, and to endure loneliness. The Chinese are not stupid, we have the ability to do technical things well enough, as long as we don’t look short-sighted, don’t just look at the present – it’s not that you don’t look at the interests, don’t say it so lofty, but at least have a very solid long-term plan, the situation would be very different.
Kechuangren: In your opinion, which landmark events can prove that the Chinese open source community is truly maturing?
Jiang Yongqing: In terms of technology and products, the first is that the level of technology is in place, and the innovation and contribution of the top leaders of the Chinese community are respected worldwide; the second is that because of the birth of these open source technologies, it is possible to produce top products that are globally recognized. At this point, everyone will come to embrace you, and a healthy ecology will grow.
Kechuang people: In recent years, you have repeatedly preached the concept of "true open source". How do you define the standard of true open source? Why Pseudo Open Source Appears?
Jiang Yongqing: People who are truly open source will draw nutrients from the community and will continue to contribute the latest and top innovations, so that the community will become a state of continuous growth and growth. Pseudo open source is to only ask for money and only care about making money.
Again, it is not a bad thing for "smart people to make money from the open source community". The key is whether it can be sustained for a long time. If this benefit is sustainable, then there is no problem. It proves that this company is constantly creating value for the society. However, most of the enterprises that are eager for quick success and quick profits are unsustainable. After 15 years, these enterprises do not know where they are going because the foundation is too poor.
I hope that there will really be a group of open source players in China, with ideals and abilities, who can continue to learn, innovate and improve themselves.