“I found that many articles and interviews are about how to get into big companies, but actually surviving in big companies is also a skill”

Preface

The author recently changed jobs, chose to follow his heart, and did not continue to work in the previous company. Taking advantage of the recent resignation, I quickly calmed down and output my previous experience. Although I only stayed in the previous company for almost a year (the previous company referred to in this article is a certain company), I still learned some of the working methods and processes of big companies. And I believe that I was truly integrated into the company at that time, and I received a pretty good return. I hope this article can help everyone.

Understanding Company Values

​ Actually, you will find that the values of each company are a bit different, like Alibaba has “Alibaba Flavor”, ByteDance has “ByteDance Style”, in fact, it is a set of methodologies that capitalists think of to make employees work better (brainwashing). But their underlying logic is actually wanting to work well. After working for a while, I found that the most critical point of these values is “Owner Awareness”.

What is “Owner Awareness”

“Owner Awareness” simply means treating the company as your own home and the project as your own child. Gradually put yourself into the position of being the owner of the project. In this way, you will involuntarily take the initiative to do some positive things for the project (involuntarily working overtime). In my understanding, “Owner Awareness” is actually the core of various values. With it, you will “be honest and clear”, you will “pursue the ultimate”, and “make individuals become part of the organization”.

Actually, I had interned at other companies before, although it was a small company, but when I resigned, my leader told me that I had this awareness, but didn’t explain it clearly. In fact, after coming to the previous company, I knew that it had a name called “Owner Awareness”.

If you want to survive well in an Internet company, “Owner Awareness” is indispensable, because it is your motivation to work hard and fix bugs. But you can’t have too much “Owner Awareness”, otherwise you might slowly be brainwashed by the company to become a spiritual capitalist. My principle here is that if it is during work hours, I can maximize “Owner Awareness”. In my own life time, just make sure I can arrange my own things.

How to Communicate?

​ Communication is equally important in large companies, but it also comes with a cost.

Provide Context Before Communication

​ When you need to communicate with many stakeholders at the same time, it’s best to write the corresponding requirement documents and so on before the communication. The advantage of this is that it can reduce a lot of context synchronization process, the stakeholders or the other party only need to look at your documents or organized questions to basically understand the context. I usually organize the information and questions that need to be communicated into a document and send it to the other party.

In fact, this can be used in various places in life.

Recently, when looking for a house, this method can easily communicate with various landlords and agents. I only need to organize a set of rental information and send the requirements to each landlord. The landlord will know whether his house meets the requirements, which reduces a lot of communication costs.

Try to Communicate Directly

​ In large companies, many times the colleagues you cooperate with are in different work areas, so the communication cost will be relatively high. Below, I will rank the communication methods from low to high.

Find someone at the workstation < Voice chat details < Typing

​ Many times, even if our workstation is next door, we will use the company’s IM to repeatedly confirm a simple thing for half a day. In fact, this method is not good. In my opinion, the best way is to go directly to the workstation to chat details or directly pull the phone to clarify the problem in a few minutes if conditions permit. This is especially true for cross-departmental communication, because everyone’s OKR is different, so it takes a long time to communicate. Directly finding someone at the workstation or voice call is much more efficient than using internal IM communication.

Archive After Communication

After communication, it is necessary to precipitate relevant information, such as good ideas, TODOs to be done, and people to @. If it is a long-term goal, you need to start a regular meeting to prevent things from being lost.

How to Get Things Done

Your output is actually related to how much you have done and how many problems you have solved. So being efficient means being able to do more things in a limited time.

Proactivity

The key to achieving high output is actually related to your proactivity. If you are a person with strong self-drive, you don’t need others to constantly urge you, you will act like an “Owner” to lead and promote this project. Similarly, this is also a behavior that all leaders want to see in executors.

So how to improve your proactivity? It still needs to go back to the “Owner consciousness”. When you treat a project as your own child, for example: for some reason, the online bug rate of your project is relatively high. If you imagine yourself as the owner of the project, you will take the initiative to do code review, and take the initiative to write unit tests for the code. When I first joined the team, I also took the initiative to review my colleagues' code, from actively doing some small things to finally being able to take on a larger task. In fact, there is no need to be afraid of being sprayed or other situations, because you really want the project to get better, which will bring a good impact to the team and yourself.

Driving Things Forward

Often times, you will be leading a project, and you will encounter the challenge of “driving things forward”. This issue can be divided into two situations.

The first situation is working with colleagues within the team. This is relatively simple. First, you need to set a schedule and a road map, break down larger tasks, and regularly check whether things are going as scheduled. Since the colleagues you are working with are from your own team, everyone’s overall OKR is the same, so you won’t encounter too many difficulties.

The second situation is cross-departmental cooperation, which is a problem many companies will encounter. When I was at my previous company, the front-end colleagues I worked with were from other departments, and they had other tasks at hand. This is the most difficult situation, because you are likely to be focused on this task, but the colleague you are working with can only devote 30% of their energy to these tasks. For this situation, my solution after many pitfalls is as follows:

​ 1. Try to have more sync meetings. Although it may be uncomfortable from the perspective of the other colleague, more communication will raise your priority in their eyes.

​ 2: If the other colleague really doesn’t have time, and you finish your work quickly, but your project is delayed because of them. You can bring your direct leader into the communication group at the beginning of the project. This way, your leader will know that you are working hard to push this project forward, and it will be more logical when you ask your leader for resources later.

Others

​ There are some other miscellaneous items to discuss.

Avoid Malicious Speculation

​ When working, try to use benevolent assumptions instead of malicious ones. Most colleagues actually want to do a good job on the project and get promoted, including leaders who hope their department performs well. If you encounter some problems at work, don’t maliciously speculate about your colleagues or leader at the first moment. More communication and more one-on-one meetings may be a better solution.

In Conclusion

In conclusion, if you want to survive better in a large company, you need to have an “Owner’s mindset”, take responsibility for the project, find ways to make things develop in a good direction, solve problems when they arise, so that you and the things you are responsible for can grow more.

Original article link: https://vim0.com/post/softskills/how_to_live_in_big_company/