Internal email from Tencent COO: Five tips for building the best team

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Dear classmates

Welcome to Tencent and join the big family of the Interactive Entertainment Group. This is where you will display your talents, and where you will give, grow, strive, and gain.

This year marks the 15th anniversary of Tencent, and Tencent Games has also gone through a decade. In the past ten years, the hard work of Tencent people in Interactive Entertainment has made Tencent Games the undisputed industry leader. The business development and great progress of Interactive Entertainment in the past few years are due to the emergence of market opportunities and Tencent's good platform, and the continuous emergence of outstanding colleagues with high professional quality and daring spirit. At present, the Interactive Entertainment Group is already a team with a wealth of talents and world-leading online game development and operation experience.

We chose each other based on understanding and trust. This is our precious fate. InterEntertainment's goal is to become a global leading online game development, distribution, and operation team. I believe that with your joining, we will be more confident of this broader future.

As a veteran employee who has worked at Tencent for 13 years, and as a witness who has accompanied Tencent Games all the way, on this special moment of the Return Day, I especially want to talk to you, hoping to help you understand Tencent’s culture more quickly, and grow and achieve your own life goals on the Tencent Games platform.

1. Passion is the driving force of all achievements

Ten years ago, when Tencent first entered the game industry, not many people expected today's achievements. Looking back on the past ten years of the game, the most important thing that cannot be ignored is the love for games. It is this love that makes us always think about how to make it better and more innovative no matter what we face. In the early days of the game, the team was relatively small. Many things, from user management to version management to marketing, were undertaken by only one person. The work was very heavy, and they went home very late every day and were very tired. Where did their passion and vitality come from? We believe that these colleagues have a strong sense of purpose, and the sense of purpose comes from their love for work and games. It is this love that makes them pursue not only completion, but 120% or even higher. In the words of everyone at the time, they just wanted to make a "particularly powerful game"! It is this love for games and the dream of game entrepreneurs that overcame all kinds of difficulties and challenges and created today's interactive entertainment recognized by hundreds of millions of players.

Interactive entertainment is a paradise for gamers. Only passion can bring enjoyment to the game. If you don’t love the games you make, it will be difficult to achieve truly good results in this area. You will also have no motivation to research and explore, and it will be difficult to achieve long-term development.

To love games means to treat them as a lifelong career, always maintain a strong interest and curiosity in games, work hard to delve into them, and share this love with players around the world through games.

2. Continuous learning is essential for career development

In today's ever-changing Internet world, continuous learning ability has become particularly important. It will determine how far an organization and an individual can go. We also hope that you can keep learning and keep an empty cup mentality. This is not only a requirement for Tencent people, but also a requirement for everyone in modern society.

We believe that every new Tencent employee who joins Interactive Entertainment hopes to realize their life value and dreams on this platform. But before that, as a newcomer to the workplace, please first empty your mind, adjust your mindset, start with the simplest things, deeply and seriously understand the company culture, actively and actively ask people around you for advice, and carefully read the company's code of conduct, because this is the most important way for you to quickly find your personal positioning and growth direction.

Tencent has established a mentor system. The mentor will impart his experience to you without reservation and will also patiently help you answer your questions. Please make good use of this valuable resource and actively communicate and exchange with the mentor regularly or anytime and anywhere, so that he can help you quickly integrate into the team. In addition to the mentor, you will see more role models or learning objects. In the company, you will meet many world-renowned masters or industry experts. Communicate with them more and listen to their opinions more. Only by standing on the shoulders of giants can you see higher and farther.

Tencent has a very mature and complete learning and development system. There will be corresponding professional skills and management course training for different positions and different development stages. We hope that you will strive for and seize every opportunity to gain self-value and improve your ability. Only with continuous learning and progress, nothing is impossible. Here, you can say that you don’t know, but you must take the initiative to study and learn. We advocate that everyone must have the ability to continue learning.

3. Meticulous craftsmanship is our style of work

Tencent Games has been practicing the boutique strategy, and boutique is life. Bringing high-quality games to hundreds of millions of players is the mission of the interactive entertainment people. We hope that every employee has the awareness of creating boutiques and can continuously improve and polish every detail. In the eyes of players, every detail we make will be infinitely magnified. If you are an artist, your work will be viewed billions of times in total; if you are a programmer, your code will be run tens of billions of times in total. If you are a planner, a paragraph of your mission script text may be read hundreds of millions of times, which exceeds the number of times many best-selling novels are read. With such a large number of users and influence, what reason do we have not to do 100% and 100%?

Meticulous craftsmanship is a manifestation of responsibility to users. At Tencent, you will have a deeper and deeper understanding of the words "focus on user experience", which is a way of doing things that Tencent people adhere to. Many teams in Interactive Entertainment have formed a habit of always paying attention to user experience and applying it to polishing their own products after rapid analysis. It can be said that in all our product project teams, at least one hour is spent communicating with players every day. For all planning, art and development colleagues, communicating with players every day has become a must.

At Huyu, if we want to pay attention to users, we must keep communicating with players and understand their needs. In the end, you will find that a product that players really love must come from our continuous improvement of details and higher self-requirements. Paying attention to details is also the only way to turn your game from a product into a boutique.

4. People who take initiative to communicate and have the courage to take responsibility***

At Tencent and Huyu, openness is an ecosystem and a mentality. At work, cooperation is everywhere, and unsmooth cooperation also happens from time to time. In the team, we often need to work together, and even often encounter different opinions and disputes about the work content. We encourage you to actively express your suggestions and ideas, express your own opinions clearly, and listen carefully to the other party's opinions. We also hope that you can not only point out problems, but also think more deeply about solutions and actively communicate to promote implementation.

When gray areas appear in cooperative projects, our team needs people who can take the initiative to undertake ambiguous work. We hope that you will have the courage to "jump out" and take responsibility. Here, we will never let those who do more suffer losses. Those who are willing to do more and take responsibility in the team will not only grow the fastest, but will also get better development opportunities and richer matching material rewards.

5. Let positive energy become our common business card

We will fully trust and empower our employees and give everyone equal opportunities. Of course, we must also admit that there is no perfect rule in the world that can guarantee absolute fairness, but please believe that all gains depend on your efforts in work. At Tencent, as long as you can actively devote yourself to your work and complete each stage of your work well, the company will see it and will definitely give you affirmation and corresponding rewards. This process may be long and there may be errors. I hope you will focus on the future, believe in the company, dare to take responsibility, and use positive energy to support your progress. Come on!

Speaking of positive energy, we have to talk about the foundation of Tencent - integrity, which is the most important core value of Tencent. The word integrity may sound big, but in the specific daily work, it often tests whether we can stick to it. The world of online games is dazzling, full of imagination and joy, but there is no lack of temptations and even traps. Perhaps a slight difference in thought will harm the player experience, damage the company, and cause irreparable harm to individuals. Here I would like to remind every new colleague very responsibly to abide by national laws, abide by company regulations, and be an upright, self-disciplined, positive and responsible person.

Positive energy comes from a healthy body and mind. Interactive Entertainment's work has always been fun and challenging. Please pay more attention to your physical and mental health in addition to your busy work. Your happiness and health are not only the expectations of your family and friends, but also our expectations.

***, on behalf of all the brothers and sisters in Interactive Entertainment, I wish you all good health and all the best. Let’s work together for our common career goals and add luster to your personal life!