On August 20, 2012, the two major oligarchs in China’s video industry, Youku and Tudou, shook hands at the Putian Building in Zhongguancun and announced the formal merger. And just after Youku Tudou completed the integration period of about half a year, Tudou.com founder Wang Wei announced his resignation. Since then, almost all Tudou executives have resigned, with the once deeply rooted slogan-“Everyone is the director of life.” “, gradually fade out of people’s field of vision.
This is a typical Chinese-style disintegration-when a startup company is acquired by a large company, the founders of the team often choose to sit temporarily to stabilize the military. As for when to leave, it seems only a matter of time.
It is not uncommon for the founders to run away in the history of high-light mergers and acquisitions in the Chinese Internet circle. Compared with the limited space of a large platform, for the founders of the entrepreneurial team, the value and significance of continuing to stay is of little value. It is better to put it down and start all over again with a free and easy attitude.
However, in the new giant Bytedance, we seem to see a different style of painting-Zhang Nan, Yang Luyu, Zhu Jun and other outstanding founders of the acquired team are still on the front line of Bytedance today. Become a new hero of the byte empire to open up its borders and expand its territory.
How does ByteDance achieve a low churn rate of core talents in the Internet? Today, we want to turn our perspective to the inside, and talk about the super-high person imitation principle of byte beating, and how they get along with awesome talents.
I have heard many people complain to me that it’s too difficult to keep good people. Really awesome people won’t work for you. These people would rather start your own business than stay in a big company. Restricted everywhere.
Indeed, we have indeed seen too many such cases, and such complaints will surely resonate with many people. But before making the final conclusion, we might as well take a look at the case of byte bounce.
Zhang Nan, the current CEO of ByteDance China, was a product entrepreneur of social graph bar in his early years. After being acquired by Byte, he entered the headline and was responsible for the earliest product “intension”. In 2018, due to his outstanding contributions to Douyin, Zhang Nan was quickly promoted to President of Douyin. In 2019, he developed products such as Qingyan and Clipping. In 2020, he became the CEO of Bytedance China.
Yang Luyu and Zhu Jun, the founders and co-founders of Musical.ly, joined the company after being acquired by Bytedance in 2017. Currently Yang Luyu is in charge of an educational hardware product, and Zhu Jun Alex is the deputy of the Bytedance product strategy. President.
If ByteDance has an attractive magic, then what is this magic? With such questions, I started a case study for more than a year.
1. The company is also a product
In 2015, Zhang Yiming once had such a short Weibo: Develop a company as a product.
Zhang Yiming believes that when entrepreneurs start a business, they are actually working on two products at the same time.
One is the product provided to users, and the other is the product provided to employees, which is the company itself.
The CEO of the company is the product manager of these two products. He is responsible for linking the two ends, one is the business, and the other is the employee.
Some people may have questions. The company pays its employees wages and bonuses. How can employees be the company’s customers?
In fact, under the principles of economics, “employees contribute production factors to the company, and the company pays wages and bonuses to employees”. This matter is essentially the same as “the company provides products and services to customers, and customers pay for goods and services to the company.” They are almost the same, and they are all equivalent exchanges under the maximization of the interests of both parties.
“Benefit maximization” is a key indicator for all our decisions. Here we introduce a concept in economics-ROI (Return on Investment) to help us understand.
ROI, generally translated as “return on investment”, refers to the total economic return we can obtain from an investment.
Zhang Yiming once said: Many companies regard people as their company’s wastage cost, especially some CEOs are very economical and always want to hire some cheap people.
But this concept is clearly wrong in economics.
Although this person is very cheap, but can bring you very little return, or is lower than the salary you pay him, then the ROI that this person brings to you is negative. Although this person is very expensive, it will bring you greater rewards. Maybe this person is really cheap.
The same is true for employees, why is he willing to join your company, because joining your company has the greatest return on personal investment.
For the CEO, how to design the “company” product is to allow the company and employees to have the highest ROI at the same time, so that each other is satisfied with the return on investment.
So what factors determine the ROI of the company and its employees? I have listed the following formula.
Its size is mainly determined by four elements, which are the functional input (the time and money invested) at the denominator of the formula plus the psychological input (inner fatigue, mental anxiety); the functional return at the molecular end (long-term and short-term income) Plus psychological rewards (happiness, sense of accomplishment, growth).
If we want to maximize ROI, we actually have to do only two things, lower the denominator and increase the numerator.
How to maximize the ROI of employees?
Zhang Yiming disassembled byte’s talent mechanism into three points:
- First, return, including long-term and short-term economic returns;
- Second, growth, how much growth can be obtained on this platform;
- Third, the mood, whether you can work happily with the team and leaders, whether the cost of commuting affects your mood, and so on.
For example, how to reduce the functional investment at the denominator end. For example, HR suggested to provide employees with shuttle buses. Zhang Yiming said no, and directly gave employees a monthly rent subsidy of 1,500, allowing employees to rent houses near the company, saving transportation costs.
For another example, we know that many companies nowadays are all in the world, which reduces the efficiency of the company’s operations. We found that the general situation is that the person in the meeting took a long, long time to prepare the PPT. During the meeting, he was given 20 minutes to explain the content of the PPT to everyone. This time utilization is very, very low.
There is a department in ByteDance that specializes in improving the efficiency of conferences-Feiyuehui.
The first step in the meeting is not for everyone to talk about the PPT, but to send the materials you prepared to everyone in advance. After everyone has read it, directly insert their questions and suggestions through the Feishu (byte internal communication software). After 10 minutes, everyone began to discuss the inserted questions and suggestions, which effectively improved the efficiency of the meeting.
Another improvement is “space-time asynchronous”. In a meeting, not everyone will speak. Many people will come over with their computers and listen to them while dealing with their own affairs. Therefore, the Flying Reading Conference has also established a mechanism. If a person is only related to a certain topic in the meeting, then he does not need to come to the meeting. When the discussion reaches this link, he can be connected.
Second, reduce the psychological input on the denominator end.
One of the corporate culture of ByteDance is to create a “frank and clear” corporate culture, which can be understood as “dare to express real ideas face to face, oppose upward management, and be honest and direct.”
The “lack of honesty” here refers not only to malicious fraud, but also the inability to express ideas truthfully. In other words, although you did not lie, you did not express your opinions frankly. This is also a manifestation of inefficient communication.
For this, I am deeply impressed. A year ago, I went to ByteDance to talk about a consulting and cooperation project, and the teacher in charge of the reception gave me two points for attention.
First, when communicating with colleagues in our company, just call them by their first names, and don’t call them anything or something.
Secondly, our meeting room is only booked until 10 o’clock. One minute more will not work. You must go out at 10 o’clock.
Sure enough, when it was 9:59, someone knocked on the door outside, please end the meeting as soon as possible. The colleagues who were waiting outside also came in directly to start the meeting, and there was no extra polite thank you.
To work in such a work culture, our mood is very simple and pure, without any psychological pressure.
Sometimes, the key thing for employees is not only whether your salary is high or not, but also whether you have a fair evaluation of the work contribution of everyone in the company, and be fair and reasonable in all aspects of the process.
Third, increase the material return of molecular employees.
In terms of salary fairness, Zhang Yiming also raised many questions.
He said that by comparing salaries and performance, we found that salaries often exhibit various forms of premiums.
Such as premium for newcomers. This person jumps over, so how can we get a certain increase from his original salary? However, the high salary is likely to produce an unfair contrast to the fast-growing people in the original team.
How to deal with it? Zhang Yiming believes that the company should set a monthly salary according to the job level. The job level represents a stable monthly salary. If you make outstanding contributions, the company can use bonuses to reflect it. Secondly, let HR rather than the business director set the salary, and HR also does not refer to the person’s historical salary when determining the salary. HR will give a final offer based on the job level and comprehensive supply and demand in the talent market.
There is also an option issue.
When a startup company recruits people, because it is not attractive enough, it often gives some options. But the problem is that the larger the company is, the smaller the option pool is. At this time, we find that it is difficult for the diluted options to attract top talent.
Zhang Yiming also discovered this problem during the interview, because good candidates often tell him that today’s headlines are very good, but the best time to join you has passed.
The person who received option awards in the early stage, even if his contribution is relatively small later, but because his options are particularly large, he will get a lot of rewards. In other words, the identity of the employee who gets the reward is no longer an employee, but The identity of the investor.
how to solve this problem? The method given by Zhang Yiming is very simple. For early people, pay more bonuses and replace options with higher salaries.
Zhang Yiming said that an option is essentially a financial tool, and employees want financial returns. So we only need to give outstanding employees an excess financial return. He and HR said that as long as this person makes outstanding contributions, the employee can get a year-end bonus of up to 100 months of monthly salary at the end of the year.
So we can see why ByteDance can retain the core personnel of those excellent entrepreneurial teams. The reason behind it is that they have truly achieved Pay for Performance and treat your contributions fairly.
Every CEO and HR understand the two words fair, but it is very difficult to achieve it.
Fourth, improve the psychological returns of molecular employees.
Can employees grow when they come to this company? Are you happy at work? Can you give him a sense of accomplishment?
When I visited Netflix 4 years ago, I was deeply impressed by the concepts they advocated. Netflix said that the best benefits for a company to give employees are not cool team building activities or good coffee in the pantry, but recruiting even better employees than him, so that employees can interact with the best in the industry. Work together, this is the best employee benefits.
In a sense, Bytedance also practices this culture.
3. How to maximize the company’s ROI?
How to reduce the company’s total investment? Zhang Yiming also gave three criteria for their recruitment.
- Super learning ability;
- Unobscured;
- Mature in mind.
For Zhang Yiming, he wants to recruit the top people in the market. These people must use the highest salary level in the market to get them, including salary, bonuses and options to employees. The cost is relatively high. .
But at the same time, we found that after recruiting such people:
- The cost of company management has been reduced. Excellent employees are quick to speak and learn quickly. The training time and money the company spends on each employee has been reduced;
- The psychological investment that leaders spend on employees has also decreased. Everyone has a clear goal and performs their duties without losing the chain, and there is no need to worry that employees can’t stand the pressure, and our psychological investment will be greatly reduced.
Looking back, Zhang Yiming’s super learning ability, broad vision, and mature mind are actually using these three key characteristics to accurately hit the cost reduction of all elements except money to effectively maintain the company’s total investment.
At the same time, we also found that companies’ perceptions of outstanding talents are almost the same.
In 2016, I visited the headquarters of Didi Chuxing. At that time, I saw a value poster called the “Xiaoju Eyesight Chart” in their office, which wrote a few:
- Achieve others, recruit people who can become your boss after 5 years, with a broad vision and a big pattern;
- Putting down the glass heart and replacing it with a steel one is to recruit mature adults;
- Always accept challenges and regard growth as the most important thing.
Translated, these three indicators are almost identical to the three key indicators mentioned by Zhang Yiming. It can be seen that, from the perspective of economic principles, the logic of the outstanding talents pursued by the company is actually the same.
Secondly, increase the employee’s return to the company on the molecular side.
Zhang Yiming’s approach is to open up the boundaries of business without setting limits, allowing the entire company to grow rapidly. Because only in this way, these top talents can continuously create top returns.
Regarding talent recruitment, Zhang Yiming has a famous imitation of Munger.
- Never lose talent;
- Never forget the first one.
In Zhang Yiming’s view, this talent must come to me, and after he comes to me, he must also avoid being poached by competitors.
In fact, this is another abnormal thinking.
When we usually fancy a talent, if he is not the person I need in my business section, or he is unwilling to come over as a backup force, in the end I can only reluctantly give up and choose to let go.
But Zhang Yiming believes that what this person did before is not important, what is important is what you can bring to my company in the future? If my company does not have this business for the time being, as long as you are good enough and I prepare this business for you, why not?
As long as you can help me bring a higher ROI, we can do it. This is why we see why ByteDance now has so many APP products.
Fourth, through economic principles, create the optimal allocation of internal production factors
Finally, we can see that, in fact, the way Zhang Yiming gets along with awesome talents is to be able to use economic principles to create an optimal allocation of internal production factors.
Zhang Yiming has configured top company treatments, fair and transparent working mechanism, top talents in the industry, perfect administrative support, huge product flow, and high degree of freedom for excellent talents. All aspects make top talents unable to refuse and stay here. For themselves, ROI is already the greatest, so what reason do they have to go out and start their own business?
If a talent comes to you, the salary is average, the heart is very tired, and the space for exertion is small, this person should not work here.
You have no reason to keep this person, you are wasting social resources. Because the invisible hand of the market is here, the factors of production will flow to the optimal level, and they will flow to a more suitable position.
As Didi Chengwei said, the cognitive boundary of the founder is the true boundary of an enterprise. If others leave you, you may be the boundary.
5. Self-inspection checklist for startups
Finally, after talking about so many principles, how can we copy these methods into my company? I think there are two points that require special attention.
First, the byte method cannot be copied entirely.
Business growth and talent density must match each other. If the company’s business growth is slow now, we really cannot give employees the highest level of salary in the market in one step.
Therefore, we can’t copy all the byte practices. Rather than getting it in place in one step, it is better to move forward gradually.
Second, employees need to be viewed hierarchically.
For example, many senior executives are no longer so sensitive to money, but we are still giving them money in the wrong direction, or that many young people are at a time when their economic strength is very poor, and our company is constantly instilling a sense of mission and Corporate vision, in fact, the ROI we can obtain in the end is very low.
Finally, I have compiled two self-examination lists for you, and I hope it will be helpful to you.
Perspective 1: Self-check list for maximizing ROI of employees
- What is the percentage of the employee’s effective and efficient working time in his total work-related time? Can it be improved?
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Is there room for employees to reduce their own money investment in work? How to lower it? Such as canteens, gymnasiums, rental subsidies and so on.
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Is there room for reduction in the internal distortion and internal friction of employees at work? How to reduce it? As a leader, do you respond to the needs raised by employees soon, or do you respond after a long time? Do you often have random meetings and assign tasks, disrupt the pace of other people’s work, and finally make employees have to work overtime to complete their work?
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Does the company’s remuneration policy and option policy have any problems with acquaintance premium, newcomer premium, and seniority premium? How to pay fair based on performance and market level?
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How to make employees grow rapidly at work? Do company leaders have coaching leadership?
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How to let employees find a sense of accomplishment and work meaning in their work?
Angle 2: The company’s ROI maximization self-check list
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Does the company have a clear talent strategy? Are our talent recruitment standards clear?
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Is there room for improvement in the effectiveness of the time spent on employees by leaders at all levels of the company? How to improve?
Are leaders at all levels of the company exhausted and exhausted because their employees are immature and cannot improve their performance? How to improve?
There are actually two logics.
The first one is the ByteDance style, which recruits the best people with the highest wages.
The second is Foxconn’s style of play. My average labor is very cheap, but I have established various standardized SOP processes, as long as people come to do it, and this method can also be successful. There is no standard answer to this question.
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Are the leaders at all levels of the company exhausted and exhausted because their employees are immature and cannot improve their performance? How to improve?
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Does the company have any problems with internal organization and inter-departmental cooperation? How to improve?
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What is the company’s strategic growth rate? Can it match or even exceed the rate of talent growth? How to find more room for growth?
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Do leaders at all levels of the company effectively coach employees and help them create the greatest contribution to the company?
I hope that the above questions can help you improve your human efficiency and find some ways to improve gradually.
Author丨Chaos University
Source丨Official Account: Chaos University (ID: hundun-university)
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