Rebirth of the Wild Age

In another time and space, Baidu's first all-staff meeting was held in the guest room of Peking University Resources Hotel. There are only 7 employees in the whole company, namely Li Yanhong, Xu Yong, Liu Jianguo, Guo Dan, Lei Ming, Wang Xiao, Cui Shanshan, known as Baidu Seven Musketeers.

Because the hotel room is too small, everyone can only sit on the bed for meetings, which is even more famous.

But ten years later, Li Yanhong was the only one left in the Seven Musketeers, and all the other six left.

It's a pity that none of the Seven Musketeers were recruited because Sogou was founded too early. Because apart from Liu Jianguo and Xu Yong, the others were only freshmen, sophomores, or graduates, it was impossible for Song Weiyang to send people to the school to keep an eye on them at any time. In fact, he didn't remember the alma mater of these people very well.

Song Weiyang wanted to recruit Liu Jianguo, Baidu's chief technology officer, and he knew that he was a teacher at Peking University. It's a pity that when Sogou was founded, Liu Jianguo had just gone to the United States as a visiting scholar, and he had been there for two years, and was pulled into Baidu by Li Yanhong when he returned home.

This is not a coincidence, but Li Yanhong gave a lecture on search engines at Tsinghua University before he resigned to start his own business. As the developer of China's first large-scale Chinese-English search engine Skynet, Liu Jianguo was invited by Li Yanhong to attend the lecture. Although the trip did not take place, the two parties have established preliminary contact.

The first time Li Yanhong decided to start Baidu, he thought of Liu Jianguo, and the two parties discussed it through email for several months. Therefore, Liu Jianguo was the first swordsman recruited by Li Yanhong himself, and Liu Jianguo recruited his student Lei Ming as the second swordsman.

After Lei Ming joined Baidu, he was not only in charge of technology, but also served as Li Yanhong's assistant to the president. This man is the chairman of the Student Union of the Computer Department of Peking University, a core member of the National 973 Skynet project, and the leader of the index and retrieval team of Skynet. He gave up the opportunity to stay in a Ph.D. with full scholarships in seven foreign universities, and resolutely followed Liu Jianguo to join Baidu. He is also the leader of Baidu's Lightning Project technical research team.

We can imagine Lei Ming's situation at that time, the assistant to the president of Baidu, the leader of the Lightning Project technical research team, engaged in both technology and administration, it is not an exaggeration to say that he was the first person under Li Yanhong.

A few months after the completion of the Lightning Project, Lei Ming was the first to be kicked out of Baidu. In Li Yanhong's original words: The company has grown in size, and some technicians have become impetuous. interest.” A few years later, when Li Yanhong talked about the “Lightning Project” with reporters, he didn’t mention Lei Ming’s contribution at all.

As for Xu Yong, that was Li Yanhong's entrepreneurial partner and the second one to be kicked out. This guy was even worse. When Baidu was founded, he held 25% of the shares and was responsible for finding customers in the market. As a result, he resigned before Baidu's IPO listing, and he was only one step away from the victory of the revolution.

From the experience of these people above, we know Li Yanhong's management style. Absolutely make the best use of people, let employees develop their greatest potential, but they must be thrown away after use, and whoever threatens the most will leave the job.

In this way, it is more understandable why everyone says Zhang Chaoyang is a good guy, because Zhang Chaoyang never takes the initiative to let anyone go. Zhang Chaoyang made his own decisions, and only half of the power was delegated. Many good suggestions were not listened to. In the end, he even crossed over into the fashion and entertainment industry. The employees couldn't stand it and chose to leave.

None of the Baidu Seven Swordsmen joined Sogou, but only Liu Jianguo and Lei Ming made Song Weiyang feel sorry, because they are truly cutting-edge search engine technical talents. As for the other Five Musketeers, it doesn't matter. Li Yanhong is the boss and Xu Yong is the partner. Neither of them can be recruited. The other three are ordinary school students. Their fame depends entirely on their status as veterans. Their abilities are not against the sky, and they are not as good as many of Sogou's current executives.

And Father of Tieba Yu Jun is currently working at Sogou, and he came here to apply for the job. Song Weiyang didn't know where to find him.

This man graduated from the Tongji Department of Chemistry. When Sogou was founded, Yu Jun was engaged in importing in a state-owned enterprise, and then in a private enterprise selling imported chemical raw materials and declaring customs. This has nothing to do with search engines. In 2000, Yu Jun jumped to an Internet company to do data collection and editing of analytical instruments. At this time, he finally came into contact with search engines and became very interested in them. He even changed his screen name to search engine 9238.

Yu Jun moved to a small company again and wanted to apply for a search engine product manager, but was sent to do database planning.

Depressed, Yu Jun sent cover letters to more than 10 Internet companies, and spread the cover letters on the Internet: I have wanted to enter the search engine industry for a long time, but I have nowhere to go, and I am anxious, so I have this article. If there is a company that wants to do the best Chinese search, I sincerely beg for an opportunity to participate. I love search and become an obsessive person. As long as I do search, I don’t care about the region (regardless of the world, the mountains of swords and fires), and the position (regardless of high or low, first-tier or second-tier) , just related to the search), regardless of salary (maintaining personal basic necessities of life is the bottom line), regardless of work intensity (anyway, I am used to working 14 hours a day).”

His personal resume is: Search Engine 9238 (net name), male, 26 years old, native of Shenghai, a five-year graduate in the Chemistry Department of Tongji University, read books and traveled a lot.

It happened that Sogou established the Shenghai branch at that time. Yu Jun was recruited as a small employee to participate in the Sogou Encyclopedia project and was responsible for editing and reviewing encyclopedia entries.

When everyone was busy copying and pasting Encyclopedia, Yu Jun first proposed that the star category should be added, and he recommended himself as one of the product managers of Sogou Encyclopedia, who was responsible for finding celebrities from all walks of life to make entries. It took him half a year to get in touch with hundreds of domestic stars under the name of Sogou product manager, get a lot of first-hand information about the stars, and earn the only commercial income for Sogou Encyclopedia by the way. million yuan).

Is always shining gold.

Without Song Weiyang's knowledge, Yu Jun was transferred to the Beijing headquarters to serve as a product planner for the company's Internet Product Department. As soon as he submitted the proposal to develop Sogou mp3, Baidu mp3 was launched suddenly, and Yu Jun was immediately appointed as the deputy leader of the project planning team of Sogou mp3.

Not long ago, Yu Jun took out the product planning book of Sogou Tieba, but it didn't attract anyone's attention. Because Sogou already has a blog, Tieba is similar to bbs and blogs, and seems to have no future.

Yu Jun skipped several levels and sent the plan to Ding Ming's e-mail.

Ding Ming felt that there was something interesting, but he didn't reply immediately, and casually mentioned it to Song Weiyang while eating and chatting. Only then did Song Weiyang know that the Father of Baidu Tieba had joined Sogou a long time ago, and had risen step by step from the bottom employees, and now he even proposed the Sogou Tieba plan.

Song Weiyang immediately asked Ding Ming to contact Li Mingyuan, recruited Li Mingyuan to be Yu Jun's deputy, and let the two of them combine swords like Yuan Shikong to make a post.

Who is Yu Jun?

When he left Baidu, someone directly said that Li Yanhong lost half of Baidu.

Before Song Weiyang left Beijing, he took the initiative to invite Yu Jun to have dinner, and it was a family meal in the courtyard.

Chairman! Yu Jun looked very excited. He never dreamed that he was only a small employee, and he would be summoned by Song Weiyang alone.

Sit down. Song Weiyang smiled.

Thank you, chairman, Yu Jun just sat down, Shen Si brought a cup of tea, he got up quickly and said, Thank you!

Song Weiyang asked: How long have you been in Sogou?

Yu Jun said: Two months away, exactly three years.

I heard that you have been sleeping in the company, are you healthy? Song Weiyang asked warmly.

It's okay, I don't have a girlfriend anyway, it's convenient to live in the company and commute. Yu Jun smiled.

Don't be afraid that someone is a genius, but be afraid that a genius will work harder than you.

Yu Jun is a hard-working genius. He doesn't just sleep in the company, but works more than ten hours a day. He volunteered to work overtime. He often worked until midnight, and then went straight into his sleeping bag to rest. The next day, he washed up and had breakfast casually, and then worked with other employees.

What kind of blessing is 996?

Yu Jun's blessing is to work more than 12 hours a day, seven days a week. It has been two years since he was transferred to the headquarters, and he still hasn't rented a house in the capital. He really takes the company as his home, and even saves the rent. And he doesn't find it hard, because working on search engines has been his dream for three years, and being able to work at Sogou is a blessing.

Song Weiyang said: The body is the capital of the revolution. I will give you a day off and go to the hospital for a full-body examination first. I will ask someone to put a bed for you in the company. You can rest whenever you are tired. From now on, you will be able to work every day. Do not exceed 12 hours.

No need, I'm in good health. Yu Jun was a little moved.

Song Weiyang asked again: Why did you think of making a post?

Yu Jun replied: Some time ago, I was planning an mp3 project. In order to find out the preferences of netizens, I checked the search logs in the company's background. I found that many people were searching for the same keyword, and these people had the same hobbies. So I thought, why not bring these people with common interests together? Chairman, you said that now is the era of web2.0, and everyone is a creator of Internet content. If you put people with common interests together to communicate , so as to create more information that is not available on the webpage. In the long run, lovers with common interests can form a fixed circle, attract more people like a snowball, and also facilitate the information query of ordinary netizens, and the traffic will become very scary .This is also a manifestation of web2.0.

Great idea, Song Weiyang praised, and then asked, How are you going to post it?

Yu Jun said: The first thing is to be close to users. Users are the foundation of Tieba. We must be wary of over-commercialization. If the content in a Tieba is all advertisements for selling products, then this Tieba is tantamount to dead and lost its due. vitality.

Song Weiyang couldn't help laughing. He remembered the Twelve Rules for Baidu Product Managers left by Yu Jun in his previous life: 1. The product manager is the user first; It is often more important than deciding what to do; 7. Users are difficult to be educated, and it is necessary to cater to users, not to change users... 12. Don't give users what they don't want, any useless things are a kind of harm to users .

The result is particularly ironic. After Yu Jun, Baidu’s first product manager, left, the succeeding Baidu product managers violated all 12 of these rules, and none remained!

Song Weiyang asked again: If you were asked to be the director of the company's Internet product department, what would you do?

Yu Jun said: The search engine is the core of the company, and all products must be built around this core. In this way, the search engine can boost the prosperity of the product, and the prosperity of the product can also give back to the search business. Constantly launch new products and constantly By consolidating the influence of search engines, we can achieve long-term healthy development of the company.”

Song Weiyang continued to ask: Now that Sogou has decided to build Tieba, if you were asked to be in charge of the Tieba project, what would you do?

The first thing is to build a project team, Yu Jun said, I need to personally select people. Except for technical personnel, other members must have sufficient familiarity and analytical ability for this project. I don't choose people based on qualifications and education. It only depends on the fit with the project, I will ask people from the blog, and I also want to recruit station staff from outside bbs stations.

Haha, I have recruited a bbs station attendant for you. Song Weiyang couldn't help laughing.

People like Yu Jun are half-way monks. They have been dealing with chemistry for more than 20 years, and they don't pay too much attention to technology when doing projects. It is also because of this that he recruited Li Mingyuan, who was still in his junior year, to Baidu when he was doing post bars. As a result, he recruited a prince and Baidu's youngest vice president.

Let's go in and have dinner, Song Weiyang stood up and said, When you make achievements in the post bar, you will be promoted to the deputy director of the 'Internet Products Department'. This is what you deserve. An employee who lives in the company is not It’s easy to find, you have really made the company your home.”

(ps: I’m crying, today Lao Wang ushered in the first silver league in his life, thanks to Miss Raspberry Yogurt. I also thank all the leaders, I won’t name them one by one, Lao Wang feels ashamed. Today I will stay up late at the party and add an update, everyone will watch it tomorrow.)