69novels Chapter 158 Business Warfare: Starting with Undermining the Opponent
Chapter 158 Business Warfare: Starting with Undermining the Opponent
Chapter 158 Business Warfare: Starting with Undermining the Opponent (6k)
Lu Siyu was puzzled.
Listening to the boss's excited words and seeing his excited expression, it felt like the boss had worked under Yu Feng before.
But in her memory, the boss's first job was starting his own business and being his own boss; he had never worked for anyone else before.
Lu Siyu was puzzled, but she didn't ask further. She simply confirmed the meeting time with Geng Zhi and then quietly exited CO.
I went to the office to confirm the time with the other party again.
She had barely left the office when Du Yujiao burst in, her voice brimming with excitement: "Boss, boss, we've finally made progress!"
As Mingfan Technology Company developed rapidly, Du Yujiao, who was one of the founding employees, was no longer in charge of administration. Instead, she was appointed by Geng Zhi as the human resources manager, in charge of human resources business.
Du Yujiao has been extremely busy this past week.
The only task that Boss Geng assigned her was to poach people, a whole group of people.
"Digging up a batch" means not three or five, but seven or eight or more.
However, recruiting talent is not easy, and to be precise, it's difficult because the boss's needs are somewhat unusual.
Poaching five or six R&D personnel from companies like Tencent, Baidu, and Alipay in Shanghai wouldn't be that difficult for her.
But poaching talent from Tencent's R&D department in Guangzhou, especially high-profile individuals, was a real challenge for her.
She contacted several headhunting firms directly, and after a lot of effort, she finally got some results and rushed over to report.
"Yu Jiao, speak slowly."
"Boss, that engineer named Liao Jun, nicknamed Penguin, I finally managed to get him to come for an interview this Saturday after much pleading and persuasion from the headhunter," Du Yujiao said excitedly.
Geng Zhi raised an eyebrow slightly: "Not bad, not bad. What about the other candidates?"
"The other ones—the headhunters are still trying to persuade them, and we should have results in the next couple of days."
Geng Zhi nodded slightly, not too surprised.
Stealing core R&D talent from Tencent is not something that can be done overnight; being able to invite Liao Jun as a breakthrough point is already quite good.
"Okay, as long as the person is reliable, salary and benefits are not a problem."
"Okay, boss!" Du Yujiao nodded quickly, then asked, "By the way, boss, for Liao Jun's interview, I should have Dr. Lü conduct the first round, right?"
"No need for Senior Brother Lü, I can come directly for the interview."
"Okay, shall I schedule him for an interview at 10 a.m. on Saturday?" Du Yujiao asked.
"Isn't his flight Friday night? Let's schedule it for 2 PM sharp, so he can rest a bit more on Saturday morning."
"Okay, boss, I'll go and communicate right away!" Du Yujiao said, and then left.
Guangzhou, TIT Creative Park, at the entrance of the canteen downstairs from the Penguin R&D department.
Liao Jun, who had just finished dinner, did not go upstairs to work overtime as usual. Instead, he carried his computer, took a taxi, and headed straight for Baiyun International Airport.
Recently, their QQ Mail department has been very busy. The major restructuring of QQ Mail is extremely challenging, and Zhang Xiaolong has also started a new project called "Message in a Bottle".
As a key member of the R&D team and the group leader, he has been working non-stop for over a month, never leaving work before 11 p.m. and only taking one day off each weekend.
When headhunters first called him, he refused without even thinking.
It wasn't until a female headhunter from the third headhunting firm contacted him again that he reluctantly asked who the next company would be.
When he heard that it was Shanghai Mingfan Technology, the company that developed Momo, he suddenly felt a tiny bit tempted.
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He's been using Momo for a long time and really enjoys it.
He also knew about the straightforward nature of Momo's boss, and Momo's headquarters were in Shanghai, which was very close to his hometown, Jiangsu Province.
But he didn't hesitate for long before decisively refusing.
Momo is, after all, just a small company, much smaller than Tencent.
After graduating from Sun Yat-sen University in 02, Liao Jun joined Tencent through campus recruitment. He was one of Tencent's earlier employees and has been promoted to T3-3. His monthly salary is 32 RMB, with a base salary of 16 months' salary, and his annual pre-tax salary is over 50 RMB.
Moreover, he also holds 9 unexercised stock options.
If he were to leave his job, he would do what his former colleague did and start his own business, or at least become a co-founder. He would definitely not choose to work for someone else.
After much pleading and cajoling from the female headhunter, Liao Jun finally agreed to go to Shanghai for an interview.
After all, the company provides room and board, round-trip airfare, and an extra 1000 yuan interview allowance, and the salary is quite good, so their sincerity is indeed commendable.
At 1:50 p.m. on Saturday, Liao Jun took a taxi to the Shanghai Jiao Tong University Science and Technology Park, following the interview instructions.
As soon as he got out of the taxi, he saw a beautiful young woman smiling and walking towards him.
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"Hello, are you General Manager Liao?" Lu Siyu asked politely.
Liao Jun was taken aback.
This was the first time someone had ever called her "General Manager Liao," and it was a beautiful woman at that.
The company not only reimbursed all kinds of expenses, but also sent HR to greet us at the park entrance. The experience and service were truly excellent.
Liao Jun felt a warmth rise in his heart and quickly nodded, "Yes, hello, I'm Liao Jun."
"Hello, Mr. Liao, I am the secretary of Mr. Geng Zhi from Mingfan Technology. Welcome to our company for an interview, even though you have traveled a long way."
Huh? A secretary??
Liao Jun was clearly taken aback.
Our AIlen is the General Manager of the R&D Department of Tencent's Guangzhou branch and the Group Vice President, yet he doesn't have a secretary.
The straightforward owner of a small startup, whose company hasn't even grown yet, is already thinking about hiring a pretty female secretary?
Liao Jun's impression of Geng Zhi was originally quite good, but now it has dropped by two points.
Lu Siyu was already leading Liao Jun into the science and technology park and did not notice the surprised look on Liao Jun's face.
Liao Jun followed along, thinking that Lü Siyu would take him to Mingfan Technology's office and let him see the company's scale.
But Lü Siyu didn't; she only took him to a public conference room downstairs in the company building.
"President Liao, please have a seat for a moment. Our General Manager Geng will be downstairs shortly." Lü Siyu politely offered him a seat.
"Is it General Manager Geng conducting the interview directly? Not the CT0 interview?" Liao Jun was slightly surprised.
"Yes, Mr. Liao. It was Mr. Geng who personally interviewed you." Lu Siyu smiled and handed over a bottle of mineral water.
"Please wait a moment," she said, then gently closed the door and left the conference room.
Liao Jun sat in the chair and began to ponder to himself.
Why wouldn't the CTO conduct the interview? Is there some kind of upheaval in the company, and they're looking to replace the current CTO with me? Are they afraid of alerting the other party, so they're keeping it from the CTO?
But the headhunter said at the time that he was only the backend manager and hadn't said he was going to be the CT0.
Furthermore, it requires candidates to meet the standard of spoken English, which makes it seem like an overseas project.
Liao Jun couldn't figure it out.
But he felt that, in any case, he should find someone knowledgeable in technology to communicate with him, otherwise he would be talking to someone who didn't understand him.
The straightforward guy's speech at the press conference was not bad, but he's just a college student. How much does he really know about technology?
Thinking this, Liao Jun shook his head and began to look around.
The meeting room was very basic; besides the projector, there was only a table, a few chairs, and a whiteboard—it was a bit worse than the Penguin-style environment.
Just then, the conference room door was pushed open, and a young man in a gray T-shirt walked in carrying a laptop and a small bottle of mineral water.
This is the same straightforward person I met at the press conference, and he even looks a bit younger than he does on TV.
"Hello, Mr. Liao, I'm Geng Zhi. It's a pleasure to meet you." Geng Zhi shook hands with a warm smile.
"Hello, Mr. Geng."
Liao Jun quickly stood up and reached out to shake hands, but felt that the other person's grip was a bit too strong.
After letting go, Geng Zhi sat down opposite Liao Jun. Without any formalities, small talk, or even a polite introduction of his own project, he went straight to the point: "Mr. Liao, I know you've been in the Tencent backend team for eight years, rising from a regular engineer to T3-3, working on the QQ messaging system..."
You've been deeply involved in the friend system and QQ Mail. To be honest, in the entire internet industry, there aren't many people who understand IM backends better than you.
Liao Jun nodded slightly; he had heard these words many times before.
He was about to ask Geng Zhi what the project was, but Geng Zhi beat him to it.
"So, let's get straight to the technical stuff," Geng said, throwing out the first question of the day.
"Momo now has nearly 2 million daily active users and receives 40 to 50 million messages every day. Our chat system is based on an open-source framework, and it can't handle the load anymore."
"If you were asked to design an instant messaging (IM) system from scratch, supporting 2000 million daily active users and 5 million messages per day, how would you do it?"
Pfft—
When Liao Jun heard that Geng Zhi had suddenly increased the daily active users by 10 times, he almost couldn't help but laugh. He felt that the young boss in front of him was exaggerating.
He leaned back in his chair, a slight smile playing on his lips.
Although it's arrogant, this scale is still just a drop in the ocean compared to QQ.
He cleared his throat and began to speak: "In terms of architecture, it is divided into three layers: the access layer, the logic layer, and the storage layer. The access layer uses LVS for load balancing, the logic layer is stateless and can be horizontally scaled, and the storage layer is partitioned into databases and tables, and hashed by user ID."
He got more and more fluent as he spoke, from TCP long connections to heartbeat mechanisms, from message synchronization to offline storage, from push-pull combination to multi-terminal synchronization.
Liao Jun did not give him a perfunctory answer just because Geng Zhi was an amateur; on the contrary, he spoke very seriously.
He spoke smugly for a few minutes, then stopped to wait for the straightforward response.
Geng Zhi neither nodded nor took notes; he simply listened quietly.
After he finished speaking, I asked a question: "You just said that message synchronization uses a combination of push and pull. Specifically, how does the push work? How does the pull work? When does the push happen? When does the pull happen?"
Liao Jun was taken aback.
This question is indeed more detailed than the [architectural design] we just discussed.
Moreover, it seems that Geng Zhi did indeed understand his answer just now?
"Push to online users, pull to offline users. Push is done directly via a long connection. Pull is done by retrieving data from the offline database when a user comes online."
He pressed further, "What if a user is online at a moment with a large number of messages, say a hundred backlogged? Wouldn't long-connection push notifications overwhelm the client?"
Liao Jun frowned.
This is a question that definitely needs to be considered.
"Message pagination can be implemented, pushing only 20 messages at a time, with the rest being pulled by the user."
He nodded firmly, preparing to ask more probing questions: "Okay. Now, the second question..."
User A sends a message to user B. A shows "[Sent]", and B shows "[Received]". How can these two statuses be kept consistent? If the message is lost, how can the problem be located?
Liao Jun's expression turned serious.
"When A sends a message, the access layer receives it, first stores it in the database, and then returns '[Sent]'. Then the logic layer finds the access node where B is located and sends the message over a long connection. After B's client receives the message, it returns an ACK, and the server updates the message status to '[Received]'."
Geng Zhi: "What if B's ACK is lost? The server thinks it wasn't received, and the client thinks it was received."
Liao Jun: "The client periodically reports the message status, and the server reconciles the data. If any discrepancies are found, the client re-reports the status."
Geng Zhi: "What is the reporting cycle?"
Liao Jun: "30 seconds."
Geng Zhi: "So, what status does the user see during those 30 seconds?"
Liao Jun remained silent for a few seconds.
"I see [sent]. But the user won't be aware of it; 30 seconds is a very short time."
Geng Zhi shook his head: "30 seconds is not short. If a user sends an important message and sees '[Sent],' they assume the other party has received it, but the other party hasn't actually received it. The status only updates after 30 seconds, during which time the user may already be waiting for a reply."
He paused for a moment: "Is there any way to reduce this time to less than 3 seconds?"
Liao Jun pondered for a while before answering, "Then we'll implement real-time ACK + local caching. The client updates its status immediately upon receiving the ACK, while simultaneously caching a copy and periodically reconciling with the server. This way, the user sees the status in real-time, and even if the server loses data, the client can still report it."
Geng Zhi nodded: "That's the right line of thinking."
Liao Jun looked at him, his expression changing. This straightforward guy really knows his stuff!
A brief silence fell over the meeting room.
"Next question:" Geng Zhi began asking forward-looking questions: "If we want Momo to support voice messages, with users pressing and holding to speak and releasing to send, the voice file would be about tens of KB."
It's down to a few hundred KB. How do I do that?
"A voice message?" Liao Jun frowned.
QQ hasn't done this yet.
He thought for a moment and replied, "Upload the audio file to the file server, return a URL, and then send the URL as part of the message."
Geng Zhi: "What about the delay? From the time the other party receives the message, what is the target?"
Liao Jun thought for a moment: "If it's a file upload, it will take at least 2-3 seconds. With push notifications, it might take 3-5 seconds."
Honestly: "Can you do it in under a second?"
Liao Jun was stunned for a moment.
"Within one second? Impossible. The physical time for a file upload is more than one second."
Geng Zhi shook his head: "But I can do it."
Liao Jun was taken aback again and quickly asked, "What do we do?"
He smiled and said, "I can tell you after you join the company."
Liao Jun remained silent for a long time.
"Are you in the technical field?" He finally asked the first question he had wanted to ask for a long time.
"Yes, I have a formal computer science degree."
"Uh—so Mr. Geng, you're a PhD from Jiaotong University?" Liao Jun asked, half-confirming and half-doubting.
"No." Geng Zhi shook his head and answered truthfully, "I am an undergraduate from Lanzhou University. To be precise, I will be a first-year graduate student at Shanghai Jiao Tong University this September."
Liao Jun was surprised again, muttering, "Oh, so Lanzhou University's computer science program is this amazing!"
Geng Zhi wanted to say, "[It's not Lanzhou University that's awesome, it's me, Geng Zhi, who's awesome]", but after thinking about it, he held back.
He didn't give Liao Jun a chance to ask further questions, and continued, "Fourth question: A user in Shanghai sends a message to a user in New York. The transoceanic network latency is over 200 milliseconds and is unstable. How can the user experience be verified?"
Liao Jun didn't immediately answer. He was thinking carefully.
"We deploy overseas nodes, and messages travel via dedicated lines. When a user in Shanghai sends a message, it first goes to the Shanghai node, then via a dedicated line to the US node, and finally is pushed to the user in New York."
Geng Zhi: "Dedicated lines are very expensive. What if there's no dedicated line available temporarily?"
Liao Jun thought for a moment: "The message is stored first, then synchronized asynchronously. After the user in Shanghai sends the message, it's stored in the Shanghai database, and then asynchronously synchronized to the US database in the backend. The user will see '[Sent]', and will see '[Received]' after synchronization is complete."
Geng Zhi: "What if the user logs off before the synchronization is complete?"
Liao Jun: "Retrieve it next time it goes online."
Geng Zhi: "How does the user know that the message has been synced to the other party?"
Liao Jun remained silent.
Geng Zhi: "Could we do [multi-datacenter synchronization + client state machine]? After a message is stored in the database in Shanghai, its status is [sent]. After being synchronized to the US, the status changes to [synchronized]. After the recipient client pulls it, the status changes to [received]. This way, users can see the complete lifecycle of the message."
He paused for a moment: "Is it technically difficult?"
Liao Jun looked at him with a complicated expression.
Technically it's not difficult, but this is a question that not everyone can ask.
"It's not difficult. But it requires designing a state machine and a synchronization protocol."
Geng Zhi put down his pen, looking directly at Liao Jun: "Yes. This is the person I've been looking for—someone who can create these [not difficult, but no one has ever done before] projects."
Liao Jun straightened his posture and asked, "President Geng, I'd like to know, is your company planning to develop an overseas IM product?"
At this stage, Mingfan Technology will certainly not directly develop overseas IM services. This path faces stringent regulatory issues and is very difficult to succeed on.
However, Geng Zhi was unsure whether Liao Jun would come to the company in the future. Therefore, he couldn't tell him that the new product's competitor was Tencent, so he used the overseas product as a pretext.
He simply smiled at the pants, neither confirming nor denying.
But in Liao Jun's eyes, the answer was: "Yes."
Geng Zhi continued, "Mr. Liao, I've finished asking my technical questions, but I have other questions. I'll ask them and then answer you."
"Oh, okay." Liao Jun nodded awkwardly.
Geng Zhi looked Liao Jun straight in the eye again: "You've worked on QQ for 8 years. QQ's IM system is the most mature, stable, and resilient system in the entire Internet industry in China."
I'm curious, have you ever thought about what aspects of the QQ system you wanted to implement but didn't?
Liao Jun remained silent.
He began to reminisce, suddenly recalling the time when he first joined Tencent.
After a long silence, he slowly spoke: "Yes."
He paused for a moment: "QQ's architecture was designed in the early 2000s. Over the past ten years, we've been making repairs and tweaks, but the underlying logic hasn't changed. Some new things aren't impossible to do, but QQ's scale is too large, and we dare not rely on it."
Geng Zhi: "For example?"
Liao Jun: "For example, message status. QQ messages—it's not that it can't be done, but with hundreds of millions of QQ users, changing the status machine would affect the whole system."
Geng Zhi: "If you were to design an IM system from scratch, how would you do it?"
Liao Jun: "I will..."
Geng Zhi: "Anything else?"
Liao Jun then went on and on.
Some of these things aren't really suitable to talk about during an interview. But the atmosphere was right, and Liao Jun couldn't help but say them anyway.
Geng Zhi smiled and said, "President Liao, this is exactly what I want to do."
He stood up, walked to the whiteboard, and drew a line.
"Mr. Liao, just as you said, we are not continuing to work on Momo, but starting from scratch to design an IM system that will not compromise due to historical baggage, so that people in North America can also use it."
He turned to look at Liao Jun: "I need someone to help me set up this system. You are the most suitable person I can find."
Liao Jun remained silent for a long time.
He finally spoke: "Mr. Geng, I have a few questions."
Liao Jun paused for a moment before continuing, "What level of capability can this system you're talking about achieve?"
"Delivered in 1 second, 99.99% reliability, supports billions of messages, supports text, voice, and images — adapted to every mobile device in America."
Geng Zhi recounted his aspirations for the new project, highlighting the most relevant and ambitious aspects.
"Mr. Geng, your ideals are lofty, but reality is... "
"But the reality is, we are negotiating with several international capital firms, and the amount of financing will be absolutely beyond your imagination, absolutely." He spoke frankly and truthfully.
Not only Liao Jun couldn't have imagined it, but Geng Zhi himself couldn't have either, since the negotiations hadn't even started yet.
Liao Jun was stunned.
He knew that Momo had raised $300 million in funding, and he believed Geng Zhi's words.
"Mr. Liao, you're currently at T3-3. I'm sure you know better than I how difficult it is to get promoted. If you come to us, the position and salary will be much better—"
Liao Jun was about to continue listening when Geng Zhi abruptly stopped.
With a straightforward laugh, he turned and asked, "Mr. Liao, what is your current position at Tencent? What is the organizational structure?"
""
Liao Jun knew that Geng Zhi wanted to determine his salary package based on his position in the company.
So after a brief moment of hesitation, Ying Xi, under Geng Zhi's persistent questioning, explained the overall framework, team size, and division of labor of the Yangcheng R&D Department to him.
After listening attentively, Geng Zhi nodded repeatedly, having already grasped the composition and strength of Zhang Xiaolong's team.
Seeing that Geng Zhi didn't continue his abruptly stopped conversation, Liao Jun asked curiously, "Mr. Geng, if—and I mean if—I really did join your company, what would my position and salary be?"
"Pre-tax salary doubled, settling-in allowance of 200,000 yuan, plus 0.5% stock options from the parent company. The company's current valuation exceeds 50 million US dollars, and it will break 100 million US dollars after the next round of financing. Moreover, the future valuation may be 100 times higher."
Liao Jun was a little excited, still carefully calculating the value of the stock options, when Geng Zhi continued, "To allow you to better leverage your strengths, I authorize you to bring your peers from the Yangcheng R&D department over—three, five, ten, it doesn't matter. You'll be responsible for building the team, defining the structure, and leading them. Their salaries will be at least 50% higher, plus a settling-in allowance."
Upon hearing this, Liao Jun felt a sudden pang in his heart.
If my current friends really bring a few over, then I won't have to worry about not adapting to the local environment!
However, if they do it this way, AIlen's QQ Mail Scraping team will suffer a major blow!
The QQ Scratch Card Restructuring and the Message in a Bottle project will both be affected.