iQIYI CTO Tang Xing: The Dao of Heaven and Earth, the General's Law, and the Management Theory of "The Art of War"

[51CTO.com original article] In China, the development of online video started relatively late. Youku, founded in 2004, was the first video website we saw. It merged with Tudou in 2013 to defend the status of both parties in the video industry. iQiyi was founded in 2010. As a relatively young video website, it was able to rise in such a fiercely competitive environment and be well-known and recognized by the public. In terms of quality and technology, there must be many things worth learning from iQiyi.

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Tang Xing, PhD in Mathematics from the University of Science and Technology of China——

• A heavyweight sharing mentor in the fourth season of the CTO Training Camp; currently serving as CTO of iQiyi, and has been in this important position since March 2012; responsible for managing the four major sections of products, technology, operations, and channels;
• He has worked for Intel and Google. During his eight years at Intel, he worked in almost all business operations except sales. At Google, he focused on the video search business and the development of YouTube video search services.

On November 18, Tang Xing shared his thoughts on “CTO’s Technical Vision” in the “CTO’s Perspective” chapter of the fourth season of the CTO Training Camp.

From his sharing, we can understand that as a competent CTO, one must clearly know what his responsibilities are, what are the necessary abilities, and what kind of pattern and cultivation should be possessed, etc. He must also have a technical vision, and then go from vision to decision-making.

All management comes from the art of war

The responsibilities of a CTO can be summarized as "strategy, organization, and operations." The Art of War by Sun Tzu mentions that in order to win a war, one needs "the Way of Heaven, Earth, and the Law of the General," and the "Law" here is what we call "strategy, organization, and operations" today.

Strategy is the most mentioned thing in the Art of War. Tactics always serve strategy. What a CTO should do is to make the most suitable technical strategy decisions and recruit the most suitable personnel at different stages of the company's development. For a startup CTO, the first thing to do is to understand the ultimate goal, the way to reach the goal and the current situation, as well as to be very clear about the development path of technology.

With iQIYI's current staff size of 5,000 to 6,000, there is no fixed formula for actual implementation. It is necessary to observe changes in the entire market and adjust its own technology strategy, organizational structure, and operating rules at any time. This is the reason why the saying "military forces are ever-changing, and water has ever-changing shapes" applies to this.

How to become a successful CTO? Understanding technology is the foundation. The core value of a CTO is to have a technical vision. Understanding strategy is the future. You must have a long-term vision and deployment. Understanding business is the cornerstone, knowing the social value of the company. Understanding management is the driving force. Cooperate with the senior management team and jointly manage the technical team.

The CTO's vision is reflected in his ability to discover and solve problems at the highest level. Vision can help see through the essence of things and reflect a person's higher-level value. The CTO should not only have vision himself, but also tell his team members to pay attention to their own vision.

CTO is not only responsible for technology, but also involves products, operations, and business. In this process, self-cultivation plays a very critical role . Specifically, it is reflected in:

• Those who respect themselves have authority. That is, one must have the confidence to not be afraid of difficulties, successfully complete tasks, and thus establish prestige.
• Brand. There are two aspects to this. For individuals, at any time, they should pay attention to their personal behavior and build a high-quality personal brand. For enterprises, the best brand promotion is the product's own experience, user recognition, and thus the brand effect.
• Don't vent your anger on others, and don't repeat the same mistake. This is the Chinese proverb: "Don't do to others what you don't want others to do to you." In addition, remember to not make the same mistake twice, both for the team and for yourself.

The CTO must have the ability to change the "adaptability of the organizational structure" and be able to properly switch between vertical and horizontal management methods. When recruiting, we must transition from looking at physical strength, intelligence, and ability to looking at potential, and see whether the applicant has excellent qualities such as curiosity, love of learning, focus, perseverance, and insight, and must have the right motivation.

CTO's technical perspective

CTOs need to see high, far, and clearly, and they need to see the bottom of the iceberg. For anything, we should look at the essence, not the phenomenon. Only by looking at the essence can we make the right decision.

See through: Understand the latest technologies and application scenarios. Maintain a keen interest in domestic and foreign technology frontiers and industry trends, while keeping a clear mind of the company's technology reserves and routes, and promote technological innovation and implementation.

The following figure is a diagram of the development of science and technology

Looking back, many things seem clear and simple, but the difficulty in business development lies precisely in forward-looking layout. Before new technologies become popular, a large number of technical talents must be reserved.

The Art of War by Sun Tzu mentions: If you have ten times more enemies, surround them; if you have five times more enemies, attack them. This means that if you have ten times more enemies, you will surround and annihilate them; if you have five times more enemies, you will attack them. You must invest heavily to win the war. The CTO must know what the company's core projects are every year? What projects need to be personally handled? When there are many projects, don't take care of all of them yourself. Choose two and go all out to make the key projects a success, and then use them as a basis to radiate peripheral businesses.

Look high: Stand at the height of company strategy. CTOs must remember to look at problems from the company's perspective, formulate technical strategies, and grasp the two most important points. Remember, the technical team is to help the company achieve profitability, solve survival problems, and achieve the ultimate business goals, rather than simply indulging in the misunderstanding of technical level.

Looking far ahead: planning ahead. iQiyi is one of the earliest companies in the industry to plan cloud computing, starting construction in the second half of 2012. Currently, all cloud computing and CDN networks are self-built, with a bandwidth of more than 30T per day. The cloud computing team escorts the entire iQiyi service, and there are very few problems. In addition, iQiyi has advanced planning in the industry in terms of the peak period of 350 million full-network searches, Lego backend systems, and video social networking.

From vision to decision

Tang Xing is responsible for iQIYI's four major businesses: products, technology, operations, and channels, and manages nearly half of the company's employees. From vision to decision-making, he is involved in three aspects: company, technology and products, and operations.

Company decision-making: Always remember to widen your moat. Think about company decisions from the perspective of the world's most powerful investors and establish structural competitive advantages. High-quality products, high market share, efficient execution and management are not enough to constitute a moat. You also need:

• Intangible assets: Brands, patents, legal licenses, etc., can indirectly gain pricing power and generate greater profits.
• Network effect: The value of a company’s products or services increases as the number of users increases, raising the barrier to entry for competitors and creating a long-term competitive advantage.
• Switching costs: The time, money, and psychological costs of switching products affect user loyalty and retention.
• Cost advantage: Low-cost process advantages, unique resources, and relatively large market size are advantages that competitors cannot imitate.

As a CTO parachuted into any company, you should solve problems around user experience, operating costs, and commercial monetization. There is nothing wrong with that.

Technology decision-making: Identify the technology S-curve. The CTO must make good judgments on technology investment and make appropriate investments at the right time.

When technology is just beginning, follow it; when it matures, focus on it; identify a trend and go all out. But you must be clear whether it is really promising or just a flash in the pan.

Product decision-making: Use the Boston Matrix to make trade-offs. That is, the difference between important and urgent.

As a CTO, you should do important and urgent things first, then important non-urgent things, and then urgent but unimportant things. For unimportant and non-urgent things, just throw them away and don't do them.

iQIYI Technology Showcase

iQiyi Brain. Big data, high computing power, excellent computing models and application scenarios are the basic elements for AI implementation, and none of them can be missing. The following figure shows iQiyi Brain.

iQIYI Brain was launched in June 2014. It is the world's first video brain that uses video data to understand human behavior. iQIYI Brain conducts intelligent analysis based on user, content and business data to create content, serve users and improve operational efficiency.

Video social networking. Bubble social networking uses technical means to increase user stickiness and interaction, and gather users according to their favorite stars, dramas, and interests. A certain type of people can directly comment on a drama and vote for a star.

In fact, social networking is a very difficult thing, and the resources and obstacles are huge. As a CTO, you need to take charge personally, because you need the full support of the company's top management and the allocation of resources. To do social networking, you must first effectively utilize and integrate the company's resources, second, solve the real needs of users, and third, face and solve the doubts of all related business lines.

How to manage a technical team of 3,000 people?

The three most important things in managing a technical team of 3,000 people are: system, organization, and cultural construction. The initial stage of corporate competition is the competition of price and products, followed by the competition of system and brand, and the ultimate competition is the competition of culture.

As a CTO, you must have a clear organizational chart, which represents how to manage vertically and horizontally and how to make adjustments. In Internet companies, the organizational structure should be adjusted according to the market environment, rather than being static. System and culture are the foundation of corporate organization construction. With a good system, excellent talents and products can be cultivated. And an attractive culture is the source of spiritual motivation, making the development of the enterprise as stable as Mount Tai.

As the sharing session was coming to an end, Tang Xing said that reading and fitness are the two things that are most worth spending time on, and I believe everyone understands the reason.

This article is compiled based on sharing and is only a sharing outline. Please watch the CTO training camp video for more sharing details.

CTO Training Camp - MBA for technical managers, one of the platforms for technical managers under 51CTO, is committed to providing knowledge learning and value growth for technical leaders in the industry, emphasizing the "technical vision" and "commercial vision" of technical managers, improving technical decision-making ability, commercial knowledge and leadership ability. Senior technical executives, technical founders, investors and others in the industry jointly participate in the design and teaching of course content to help China's most potential technical managers become leaders in the future technology field. The semester is a total of 13 days, including five content modules: [CTO pattern], [technical management], [corporate strategy], [corporate operation], and [self-cultivation], integrating multiple modes such as course teaching, scenario exercises, physical development, and project roadshows.

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