Why did you win the first Taosi culture award of 20000 RMB if you are neither a top R & D expert nor a sales Daniel?

Last Monday （6 month 13 Japan ）, Taosi data held a general meeting , Celebrate the fifth anniversary of Taosi data . One of them was to award Ding Bo the first Taosi culture award , The bonus is twentythousand RMB. Ding Bo joins taosicai 7 Months time , Research and development in the application group , Regardless of their educational background 、 Previous work experience , Still working in Taosi data , Not particularly prominent , But why did I award the first Taosi culture award to him ？ I'm free on the weekend , Share my thoughts with you .

Dingbo last year 11 At the beginning of this month, I joined Taosi , be responsible for Python Connector development , I was also responsible for the development of testing framework for a period of time . One month after he took office , I left Beijing for the United States , So I worked with him in the office for a short time . He doesn't report directly to me , Only through the company's internal IT The system knows how to do his work . From the code he wrote 、 Documents and discussions , He is a man who is strict in his work , A little serious , It is a qualified R & D .

At the end of February this year , Ding Bo applied for employment confirmation , I participated in his formal defense meeting remotely . With the growth of the company, Taosi data , A large number of new recruits , For induction and employment confirmation , There is a set of processes . Materials in the defense , Written preparation in advance is required , Part of it is to make clear to the company 、 It works 、 Actionable recommendations . Most of the defense , This part of the content is painless , But I didn't expect Ding Bo to be merciless , Point out the problems of the company at large , It focuses on TDengine Official documentation of . He wrote ：“ I see a tendency to ： We publicized the function too well , And users don't know how to practice . such as 2.0 Added native write interface , The propaganda is overwhelming , In practice , A... Was not found on the document demo Program ”, “ The documentation should address 90% The above daily problems , Not as it is now ： Just one. FQDN The problem of , Almost every novice has to step on the pit once , Ask in the group ”.

TDengine I am very clear about the problem of the document .2019 year 7 month TDengine Open source in the beginning , Document structure 、 I wrote most of the content myself , As the first user manual , There is still a certain professional level . but 2 More than years passed , Added many peripheral functions , especially 2020 year 8 After the open source of the cluster version in January , A lot of content has been added , The structure has not been adjusted , People are used to tinkering with the old version . And the biggest problem is that there is no search , No minor version maintenance , There is little sample code , No navigation , This makes it difficult for new users to get started .

This problem has also been pointed out by some colleagues and external developers , But because all the R & D students are busy developing new versions or solving customer problems , No one has been assigned to perform major surgery on the document . Define the interface and sample code from myself , I can't even go up and solve the problem myself , So drag on , It has become a pain in my heart , I want to wait for the R & D work to come to an end , Let's organize a big fight .

I didn't expect Ding Bo to seriously point out this problem in his employment confirmation application materials , And gave detailed suggestions for modification . He suggested that open source Docusaurus Document framework , On the left is directory navigation , In the middle is the text , On the right is in page navigation , Various OS The choice of , The choice of various programming languages is TAB key , The sample code goes to CI, To avoid version upgrade BUG, And a series of measures such as the release of documents and code at the same time . When becoming a regular respondent , After listening to him , I think the suggestions are quite clear , Executable , Instead of just complaining . So I immediately put forward , Now that you have seen the problem , There are also solutions , Can you take the lead ？ Dingbo immediately promised to try .

I didn't expect that in a few days , He himself built on the existing documentation , use Docusaurus Built a prototype , Show me the effect , I think it's pretty good , Make a statement immediately , Let Dingbo take the lead in refactoring the document , Other R & D students , Including myself to cooperate with his work . After nearly 2 Months of fighting , Under the organization of Dingbo , Many R & D students participated , Rewrite document , near 100 A page , It took me at least two weeks ,TDengine The new version of Chinese and English documents was officially launched . After the launch , Whether in the company , Or external developers , All feel new and fresh , The quality of documents has made a qualitative leap . I stayed in America for half a year , Remote management , In this half year , There are only a few jobs that satisfy me , This is one of them .

Taosi data is a research and development base time series database （Time-Series Database) The company , Storage engine 、 Query computing engine 、 Distributed design has great technical challenges and barriers . But as a company , Even if the core technical problems are solved well , If there are other problems , That is the short board , It needs to be solved . Because users don't know where the core is , It will not just pay for the core modules , What he wants is a complete product and a complete experience . therefore TDengine Connectors for various programming languages 、 file 、GitHub、 Official website 、 Demo program 、 Customer Stories 、 Even the interaction of user groups is very important . As long as one piece is not done well , A number of users will be lost .

As a startup , Taosi data team has always been small , from 2021 From the year onwards , Just began to recruit people , Even so , Not now 90 people . A lot of work arrangements are not professionalized yet , Often one person has to do several jobs . In the first two years , We only 5 personal , Wang Jing, the only girl who is not in R & D , Personnel matters 、 financial 、 Administration 、 The market needs a shoulder to shoulder , Even the first version of our website was created by her . Slowly the team is getting bigger , But the degree of specialization is still not enough , Our full-time designer was hired six months ago , The poster of each previous event 、PPT、 The web pages are all made by Xia Xin . Quite a lot of work arrangements , All my friends can refuse me , Because they have never done , I didn't provide corresponding training , Just drive the ducks onto the shelves . Fortunately , Most of my friends have not refused my work arrangement .

But as the company gets bigger , The team is becoming more and more professional , We finally have professional personnel 、 Professional finance 、 A dedicated testing and R & D team , A dedicated application development team , A dedicated technical support team 、 Market group 、 Ecogroup and so on . But the problem is , Everyone only looks at their own territory , The boundaries are becoming clearer . Problems are beginning to appear in big companies , For questions that are not your own responsibility , Are slowly turning a blind eye . For ordinary people , Is less active in pointing out problems , Most of them treat their work with the mentality that doing more is better than doing less . Although it is CEO, I can't see all the problems in the company , This is actually a major obstacle to the company's continuous growth .

How to solve this problem ？ I think we can only rely on the spirit of ownership . Only agree with the prospect and development of the company , Tie your own future to the future of the company , Love the company , Will not care about the arrangement of work , Will not care about short-term gains and losses , If you encounter any problem, you will try to solve it , Will complete any assigned task on time and beyond the level of peers in the industry , Will point out the company's problems without mercy , And try your best to solve it , Or promote its solution . The more such people , The more promising the company is . The success of the company is not a one-man show of the founder or the founding team . If you clearly see the company's problems , Unwilling to point out , Be sure to wait until the company CEO See who will solve it , The completion of the work does not aim at excellence , In fact, your heart is no longer in the company , Just get a salary .

TDengine The document does have problems , The preparation and maintenance of documents are not within the scope of Dingbo's work , But he dared to point out the problem mercilessly , This is the expression of the spirit of ownership . Not only point out the problem , And propose solutions , That means he is not superficial about the problem , But made a very detailed analysis , This is even more valuable . That's why I dare to make a decision , Let him take the lead in this work . I personally want to hear different voices , Always encourage people to make more comments , Especially the young partners who have just joined the company but have not been assimilated . But the past two years , Not a few complaints have been heard , But most of them are not specific enough , There are no corresponding executable recommendations , It's just a breeze in my ears . for instance , Almost all incoming R & D , They all complain about the lack of code documentation , Few comments , But when he writes his own code , I haven't found a way to solve this problem , And there are still some people who can not reach the average level . in my opinion , Such complaints or criticisms , Totally worthless .

So what Ding Bo did on the document , It is completely in line with the spirit of ownership I advocate . Taosi data should form its own values and culture in the process of development , The spirit of ownership is what needs to be encouraged most . How to encourage ？ That's the bonus , Not slogans , I hope to really promote the formation of the company's values and culture through the stimulation of bonuses . So when I decided on the reward list before the meeting , Just decide 2 ten thousand RMB Limit , And the name of the award is “ Taosi culture award ”. Before starting a business 2 year , Many people joined Taosi but left immediately , But what's left is , Have become the co-founder of Taosi . They have one thing in common , They all have quite a sense of ownership . Whether it is Shengliang 、 Little liao 、 Wang Jing , Or Hongze, who joined the team as soon as he graduated from the University , Do not like to give me face , They like to say that I made a mistake , I am very happy , Because they really want to do a good job of Taosi .

In addition to the spirit of ownership , What we also need to encourage in particular is the spirit of innovation . Innovation is not only reflected in the research and development of core technologies , It is also reflected in the market 、 sales 、 Operations and every department of the company , The essence of innovation is to greatly improve work or production efficiency . If you can put TDengine Double the performance of , It can greatly improve the stability , It can shorten the project implementation time by half , It can make some current tedious work automatic , It can answer questions more efficiently in the user group , Can make our blog 、 The wider spread of video and so on , That is what we need to encourage , Need a big prize . Innovation requires bold attempts , And there must be failures , But we will never accuse failure , As long as we can correct it quickly , Just learn from failure .

about “ Taosi culture award ”, In the future, there will be no quota , Set no time , As long as you dare to point out problems that are not within your scope of responsibility , Solve it or promote its solution , As long as there is innovation , It can greatly improve work efficiency or product competitiveness , We will reward you immediately , And the bonus will be paid immediately . That's the only way , Taosi data is promising , It is possible to create top-level time series database products （Time-Series Database）, It is possible to become a world-class basic software company .

Tao Jianhui

2022 year 6 month 19 Wangjing, Beijing, Japan