GSX CTO Li Gangjiang: How startups build excellent technical teams

Once upon a time, you had the idea of ​​starting a business, you wanted to lead your team to achieve results in a certain field, and you began to imagine a promising future, but the facts were in front of you and you had no idea where to start. When you have a direction for starting a business, you immediately think of the funding issue, and then plan for it. After the funds are in place, you start to think about the talent issue. You will find that you will face many difficulties, so you start to feel confused. What kind of people should be recruited, what problems will there be, and how to avoid your own mentality problems? At the "CTO Training Camp" event hosted by 51CTO College Recruitment, Li Gangjiang answered these questions for us.

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Li Gangjiang , co-founder and CTO of GSX. He holds 8 US patents and has served as a Microsoft R&D engineer, Intel R&D manager, Google senior R&D manager, and Sohu Video CTO. He joined Baidu in May 2013 and served as the director of Baidu's commercial platform R&D department and the director of Baidu's big data department.

About A+ Technical Talent

So what is an A+ technical talent? How to judge this? According to Chen Xiangdong, CEO of GSX, A+ talents are kind, sunny, spontaneous, self-driven, and confident people who have won several battles. If he is a very vicious person, no one wants to deal with him. So we need sunny and positive people.

What are the characteristics of A+ talents? A+ talents are natural and self-driven. Whether in a startup or a large company, they will find ways to solve problems on their own. They are not just executors, but also confident talents who have won many battles. A+ talents will not have their self-esteem hit by speaking directly, because they are confident and have won many battles. They know they have the ability, so even if they make a small mistake now, it does not mean that they will not be able to get up in the future. Their successful experience shows that they are confident talents.

Why do we need A+ technical talents? If the company does not recruit A+ talents but B talents, what are the characteristics of B talents? B talents have stronger anxiety and insecurity than their leaders, so B talents will look for C talents, and C talents will look for D talents. When a company recruits A+ technical talents, it at least guarantees that the company has B talents. It is absolutely impossible to recruit B talents from A, C talents from B, and D talents from C.

How to attract A+ talents? First of all, you must give him a high enough status. Many companies like to use "partner" to trap people, because it is well known that partners have great responsibilities. GSX has not yet launched a partner policy, but it has a co-founder policy. It has a characteristic that it traps you. If you want to become a co-founder, the company will give you important departments and tasks, give you enough rights, and basically not get a salary after paying a certain amount of social security, only equity incentives. Most companies have higher and higher salaries as their positions are promoted, but GSX is the opposite. The higher the level, the lower the salary, and everyone does not have a competitive mentality. GSX hopes that everyone will not spend too much energy on the struggle between departments. If you don't pay attention, the company will not be able to go public, and you will lose the most. Secondly, professional reputation is very important. Attract talents with your reputation. Another thing is to cast a wide net. A+ talents don't come to you by chance.

How to identify A+ technical talents? A+ talents have a very important characteristic, which is strong technical ability. A technical management cadre must serve people with his skills. Only those who have been good programmers know how to train a good team of programmers. If you leave the front line and don't write code, you may not be able to keep up with the technology, and you may not be able to manage the people below.

How to price A+ talents? In startup companies, we can use a low cash, high equity model, which can motivate these A+ talents to work with us instead of having a worker mentality. In mature companies, we need to give A+ talents high salary incentives because they have rich experience and can help you solve problems.

Six elements of an excellent team

A+ talent counts as one.

Act quickly. Li Gangjiang advises everyone: If you have an idea, act quickly, maybe it can open up a new career for you. Don't think too much about the past and the future. In a big company, speak directly and act quickly. Do what you need to do. If you can be faster, it's better and you can succeed. Of course, if the company can't tolerate your behavior, then you can leave. It doesn't matter.

Be willing to share. When the team grows, the employees below are particularly interested in knowing what is happening in the company. Whether it is good or bad, communicate with employees more often and let everyone know that even if we encounter difficulties, we will explain it clearly, so that employees will not feel that the management is hiding something. Sharing is very important.

Infect others. How can a startup solidify everyone and make them willing to work overtime for you for a long time? Salary incentives are too costly, and equity incentives are easy to break, so spiritual incentives and cultural value incentives are very important. Having a spiritual core is very important and can infect others.

Don't be a victim. Many things will happen in the course of entrepreneurship, both good and bad. Don't always think that many things are done against you, and don't think that it is a political struggle. We must believe that human nature is good at the beginning, which can solve many problems without unnecessary thinking.

Stay optimistic. Starting a business is hard work, and there is a certain amount of financial pressure, and I am not so optimistic about the future. But the most important thing is to stay optimistic. Through starting a business, I have learned a lot, my life experience has been complete, I have met a lot of friends, and this experience is also satisfying.

We must have A+ talent. Even if we cannot have A+ talent, we must at least have B talent. After we recruit A+ talent, we need to act quickly. There are no euphemisms or instructions. When you have resources, use them immediately. Be willing to share, infect others, don't be a victim, and stay optimistic. I hope you remember these six points to help you build an excellent team.