Speaking of ByteDance, who do you think of? Perhaps the first thing that most people think of is Zhang Yiming, the founder of the company. His protagonist's aura is too conspicuous.
However, on May 20th, Zhang Yiming suddenly announced that he would resign as CEO of the company, and he also appointed a successor: Liang Rubo.
Zhang Yiming said that in March this year, there was a small-scale discussion within the company about his resignation as CEO. At that time, he proposed to let Liang Rubo replace him, and everyone agreed. The two will hand over their jobs before the end of this year.
Liang Rubo is so low-key, many people have heard this name for the first time. In fact, he is the co-founder of ByteDance, and he created Tik Tok, which is now popular all over the world.
Zhang Yiming and Liang Rubo revisited their birthplace in ByteDance, recalling the initial start-up time. Liang Rubo concluded that that year was "AlwaysDay 1".
Chat together and share computers.
Zhang Yiming, a native of Longyan, Fujian, was born in 1983. When he volunteered in senior three, he set himself four criteria: first, he must be a famous comprehensive university, unlike China University of Science and Technology, where the ratio of male to female is seriously out of balance, the relationship between supply and demand is unbalanced, and it is too difficult to find a girlfriend; Secondly, you must rely on the sea, because you like seafood; Third, don't be close to home, lest parents always find a dormitory; Fourth, it should snow in winter, because he has never seen snow and wants to play.
In this way, Nankai University became Zhang Yiming's only choice, and he and Liang Rubo, a candidate from Yichun, Jiangxi, became classmates and roommates.
In 20 16, Zhang Yiming was invited to return to Nankai University, his alma mater, to give lessons to freshmen. The first name he mentioned was Liang Rubo:
"Many friends met because they like computers, and later became entrepreneurial partners or colleagues, such as my roommate Liang Rubo. In his sophomore year, he went to buy a mainframe, and I bought a monitor to make a pair for two people to use together. Our two microelectronics majors learn programming together every day. "
The first asset that Zhang Yiming and Liang Rubo jointly owned was a computer with only 256 megabytes of memory. Later, Zhang Yiming transferred to software engineering, and the computer was given to Liang Rubo.
At that time, Zhang Yiming, Liang Rubo and other friends often stayed together in the laboratory until one or two in the morning. We often go out together and eat together two or three times a week. They will also play table tennis and badminton together on weekends. Liang Rubo said: I exercise because I like it, but Zhang Yiming insists on exercising because he thinks he should.
Liang rubo
What impressed them deeply was that Zhang Yiming had a girlfriend, who was a typical man in science and engineering.
In college, Zhang Yiming helped many students install computers, especially female students, and also undertook maintenance work. Once, he helped a girl in the same village to repair the computer. When he came back, he told Liang Rubo excitedly that he had taken a fancy to the girl in the same village and decided to chase her. Later, I went to repair the computer several times and chased others on BBS. When Zhang Yiming felt the time was ripe, he asked her out to express his love. As a result, Zhang Yiming was ruthlessly rejected. Liang Rubo wanted to comfort Zhang Yiming, but Zhang Yiming didn't care.
"I feel that this matter has been told to you. It's wonderful in the current words. " Liang Yubo recalled.
So, Zhang Yiming really like circumstances, continue to chase, finally, after a long time, or catch up with, that girl is now Zhang Yiming's wife.
Space is tangible and dreams are infinite.
In 2009, Zhang Yiming and Liang Rubo, who had graduated for four years, started their first venture: co-founded the vertical real estate search engine "Jiujiufang". At that time, Zhang Yiming was quite proficient in information dissemination. However, real estate search is a low-frequency application, so Zhang Yiming decided to quit Jiujiufang and make a software that can collect high-quality information and make personalized recommendations on the mobile phone.
20 12, Zhang Yiming, Liang rubo and others founded the ByteDance in zhichun road, Haidian district, Beijing. There are many universities and scientific research institutions, as well as many office buildings and residential buildings. This is also the hinterland of Zhongguancun. They rented a private house in Qiu Jin's home and started their business.
At that time, the company's largest conference room was only 10 square meter; There are two bathrooms, male employees use one outside the bedroom and female employees use one inside the bedroom; The furniture is all bought from IKEA, without any customization.
Zhang Yiming recalled his first pioneering days.
After the business was a great success, they revisited their old place together, happily recalling the hard years of that year and being quite satisfied with the office environment at that time. Zhang Yiming said: "The conditions of startups are not bad. I have a colleague who started a business and only has one bathroom. " Liang Rubo said: "I have seen some other teams before, and there are many cockroaches. We have no cockroaches here. "
Of course, the founder's mentality is good, but some new colleagues left two days after joining the company, feeling that the company is not standardized and is a small company. Everyone has his own interests. Someone left, and both of them persisted. At an annual meeting, the company ordered eight hot pot takeaways from Haidilao, and finally only opened four pots, because they all tripped.
Zhang Yiming said: "Space is tangible and dreams are infinite." It is in this private house that they developed today's headlines. In April and May of 20 13, they left their home in Qiu Jin and moved to an office building.
Liang Rubo used to be mainly responsible for technology in the team. As the director of R&D, some people call him the technical director. He led the team to constantly improve the algorithm, such as improving the location-based content recommendation function-judging the current status of users according to the length of time their mobile phones are in different locations. For example, on holidays, users often appear in some tourist attractions, so the system will recommend some local attractions, accommodation, transportation and other information to users.
Liang Rubo knows that pushing is actually a very difficult thing. A good push is to strike a balance between meeting users' needs and preventing disturbing users. He once imagined a student who came to today's headline interview waiting for the interview in the conference room and took out his mobile phone to brush it. Today's headlines are based on the interview experience shared by the forum and other interviewers in Weibo.
Zhang Yiming is the person in charge of the company and is also responsible for personnel work. In Liang Rubo's impression, Zhang Yiming has two characteristics: one is accurate in judging people, and the other is "stubborn". The first batch of 100 employees in ByteDance were interviewed by Zhang Yiming himself. Two years later, the company grew, and he could only interview about 70%, but each offer was issued after he personally confirmed it. Once you meet someone you think is good, even if you don't get them at that time, Zhang Yiming will try to understand each other's current situation or bring people in.
Every time the team recruits outstanding talents, Liang Rubo feels it is very rare, but Zhang Yiming always says that he can find better talents. In Liang Rubo's impression, Zhang Yiming doesn't work like many makers, but he is as calm as the science and engineering boy who chases girls.
Liang Rubo once said that he had never seen Zhang Yiming in a state of fighting chicken blood, and he was "not too excited or too depressed". Even if he encounters uncomfortable things, Zhang Yiming is very restrained, and it is difficult for others to see negative emotions from him. When encountering difficulties, he just "quickly called a meeting of people who can help the whole company to discuss who can do what".
"Take over half the system I wrote."
In 20 16, Liang rubo saw a short video, founded Beijing micro-broadcasting vision technology co., ltd., and developed Tik Tok APP, which won many angel investments in today's headlines.
Liang Rubo moved today's headline algorithm to Tik Tok, creating another explosion. On September 26th, 20 16, Tik Tok was officially launched. Under the leadership of Liang Rubo, in just one year, Tik Tok has the functions of advertising, live broadcast, enterprise certification, external chain, Taobao shopping jump and so on, and has rapidly matured on the road of commercialization.
Later, Zhang Yiming handed over the personnel power to Liang Rubo. Since 2020, Liang Rubo has been in charge of the human resources and management of ByteDance Group, which has promoted the organizational construction and talent development in ByteDance. In the past year, the number of employees in ByteDance has increased from 60,000 to more than 654.38 million.
In March this year, Liang Rubo announced a new appointment in an internal letter: Zhou contributed to join as the chief financial officer. Zhou once worked in the fields of technology and finance. Before joining Xiaomi, he served as CFO and president of international department. Before joining Xiaomi, he worked in financial institutions such as DST and Goldman Sachs to invest in science and technology, and promoted DST to invest in ByteDance at an early stage.
It was before and after Zhou was hired that Zhang and Liang revisited their old haunt. Probably at that time, the handover of the two people has been passed in a small scope.
Why did Zhang Yiming quit the front?
In an open letter on May 20th, Zhang Yiming explained: "I am not a mature manager in the traditional sense, and I am not very good at socializing. I prefer to learn organization and market principles to reduce management. I like surfing the Internet, reading books, listening to songs and being in a daze. " "When the business and organization become complex and large-scale, the CEO, as the central node, is prone to be passive: listening to a lot of reports and summaries every day and making a lot of approvals and decisions will easily lead to the slow update of internal perspectives and knowledge structure."
So, why did he choose Liang Rubo to take over?
Zhang Yiming said, "Rubo is the co-founder of the company, and ByteDance is the second company I founded with him. In ByteDance, he successively held positions in product research and development, flying books and efficiency engineering, human resources and group management. From the establishment of the company to now, I have written half of the system from purchasing and installing servers. He has helped me with many things, such as important recruitment, enterprise system and management system construction. In the next six months, the two of us will work together to ensure the handover at the end of the year. Please support the work of the new CEO Li Bo! "
Liang Rubo also sent an open letter: "Before starting a business with Yi Ming in 2009, Yi Ming told me that we had the opportunity to do some important and non-urgent work. In recent years, I have always felt lucky to be able to take root in technology, products and management, from making user products to later building enterprise products, and then taking charge of human resources and management, because Yi Ming has handled many difficult and unexpected tasks ahead. Now, for the company's longer-term development, we need to get out of daily management and focus on work that is not urgent but important for the company's development to create greater possibilities. "
Apart from the issue of succession, the outside world is also concerned about what Zhang Yiming will do next.
Zhang Yiming said that he should put aside his daily management work and focus on long-term important things such as long-term strategy, corporate culture and social responsibility. He mentioned that new projects such as public welfare education, brain diseases and digital collation of ancient books are also being explored. Individuals also have some input and more ideas, hoping to participate more deeply. He also mentioned that "the electric vehicle industry is in full swing". Is it possible that he is also interested in making cars?
Anyway, it's only 38 years old now, and Zhang Yiming's future is infinite.