Workplace | I ten years

My role has changed many times in the past 10 years, starting as QA (quality assurance analyst), moving on to project management, and then moving on to People Lead (HR Director) due to an unexpected opportunity. From then on, I have been on the road to transition further and further. Over the past ten years, I have tried to play no fewer than five roles: technology, people, operations, software delivery, consulting, not to mention part-time roles as community founder, global innovation project leader, and trainer.

Looking back on the past ten years, every transformation has a great span, and it is precisely because of these spans that I have a rich decade.

One of my predecessors once told me: this company can't give you a visible future, but the unknown and uncertainty in the process will make you unforgettable.

I spent ten years to verify the correctness of this sentence, as a love of dreaming, thinking, often in a daze and willing to introspection, I have some feelings about work and growth, and I want to share with you.

1. What experience did you have from software testing to HR director

The reason I came to ThoughtWorks was because of a recommendation from a headhunter, and what really made me decide to join was because of the automated testing that ThoughtWorks does. I saw myself doing testing for many years, and even thought that testing would be my life's focus. I was excited about new technologies, new tools, new ideas, and the security of emerging market demands. I also had some great people around to guide me and see the potential for growth. So my ambition at that time was more or less to become the encyclopedia of testing. However, three years after I joined the company, my Sponsor (mentor) came to me one day and asked me if I would like to try the position of People Lead (Human Resources Director) in China because of an opportunity. At that time, the position had been vacant for several months. After the predecessor left, the China area spent a long time in recruiting, but it had not found the right person.

ThoughtWorks special culture determines the requirement for this role, unlike ordinary human resources director, this is a professional technology company, the vast majority of employees are technicians, as a human resources director, only fully understand the technical staff, understand their work, can understand and understand their story, give full play to empathy, Pay more attention to them, offer them help and support their development.

China decided to look internally, and that's when I was identified as a candidate. I was surprised and totally unprepared, and this transition was something I had never considered. But I've had a lot of colleagues come up to me and tell me what they think. Some people tell me that the opportunity is good and I can learn a lot. Some people told me that in this position, I can cooperate with more people with high vision and grow fast. Someone said to me, try it, failure can come again, young what is terrible; Someone else told me that this is ThoughtWorks style, encouraging everyone to challenge the unexpected.

What really influenced my decision was this: years from now, you may not regret what you did, but you may regret what you didn't do anyway, no one told me to give up. To this day, I love that ThoughtWorks has preserved a culture where sometimes it seems like it's one person's job, but there are a lot of people who come and offer advice. They don't interfere with your decisions, but they share their thoughts with you without reservation.

All of them encourage you to be brave and try new things, and they tolerate failure and allow everyone to break through on their own. Many years later, I realized that the best part of my growth was when I made bold decisions. On the new post, I took the first thing is to give employees to terminate his/her leave, I did not think of, was pregnant with the ideal of serving the people on jobs, but mount guard after doing the first thing is to do "wicked" naked "denied" the interests of the employees, "deprivation" used to work closely with my colleagues. At that time, the scale of the company growing, but all kinds of system is not perfect, some system became the company's development shortcomings, such as holiday system, regulation is before employees can indefinitely extend his annual leave, some older employees has accumulated annual leave more than 50 days, this is a liability in the financial, for a professional services company, the debt, the greater the The more risky the operation.

At that time, the China area was not profitable, which was always supported by global investment. Therefore, even if part of employees' holidays were cancelled, there was no way to compensate them at a 100% rate. For my colleagues who have accumulated many days of vacation, this is a hard thing to accept, including myself.

In the workplace, and even in some stage of life, you may have the opportunity to meet such a thing, reason tells you to do this, but you can't convince yourself, emotional, or stand in a position, you are doing the right thing, but on the other hand you sin, there is no answer this problem, how the test you get on the basis of others to understand and solve the problem.

The bone is very hard, but it must be gnawed.

I communicated one-on-one with all the affected colleagues, explaining the context, explaining why the decision had been made, listening to their complaints, and taking in their emotions. One of my foreign colleagues slapped the table in front of me and pointed his anger at my nose.

During that time, every night I lost sleep, I felt like I was on the opposite side of the people I liked.

At that time, I thought about giving up or quitting, but I had only been on the job for a week.

I suddenly jumped into the uncomfortable zone without any transition. I suddenly changed from a person who cares about things to a person who cares about people. There are so many skills I need to learn, and I need to improve my communication ability, influence and self-management.

If there is no way, there will be a turnaround.

I've done all the talking and I've done all the goals I've set, and I've been touched by some of the people who understand this decision and are very cooperative with me, and I know they're based on their trust in me.

Later, the foreigner came over and apologized to me. After he understood, he helped me push something.

That thing is done, I'll open the crazy make up a missed lesson, study the system of human resources knowledge, to do all kinds of readings on the subject, attend seminars learning experience, pass the qualification of human resources, I returned to the college students to do one hundred hours of career counseling, writer in several human resource platform.

It was only after a year that I dared to tell others that I was a human resources practitioner, even though I was still in the uncomfortable zone at that time, because I still had a lot to learn and a lot of problems that I could not solve.

But time waits for no one, and new opportunities will always present themselves before you're ready.

What happens if 2 goes to zero again and fails

In 2013, the company's global leadership team was restructured. Guo Xiao, then MD (general manager of China), was transferred to global CEO, and other operational roles in China were changed accordingly. I was transferred from People Lead to PSM (professional service resource management).

This is a role that matches resources for all projects, with full knowledge of all professional and client projects in China.

Project the complexity of the matching of the high is hard to imagine, because the project is not the same, to the demand of customer areas, working place, cycle and starting time is not only different also continuously dynamic adjustment, accordingly, on the allocation of personnel, not only should consider each person's skills, consider the opportunity is in line with the personal development will, whether to need to coordinate business trip home.

Ultimately, this job is about reconciling supply and demand, and the difficulty is that both supply and demand are changing dynamically.

Not only that, but the boundaries of the job are hard to define, from keeping a close eye on business forecasts to translating supply and demand into training programs, hiring priorities and initiating global support.

At that time, China has entered a channel of rapid development, and the expansion of scale has brought some problems. What was handled by one person before, now requires a team to complete.

The first thing I did in my new position was to build a team.

Team the first inside the RM (resources coordination manager), which we identified from the business department, the two of us without, on the basis of predecessors' experience, feeling the stones across the river, and human resources, the role does not belong to any field, the market also can not find the relevant industry experience, so in this post, development space is hard to predict, job security is relatively low.

Three months later, the only member of my team resigned, and I came back to the starting point like a person who failed to start a business. At that time, I thought about giving up myself and felt that I was not good at making it from zero to one, which was the most confusing stage in that position.

In hu kai of the general manager of China's help, I went to India, India was the only country to have a RM team I joined India RM team, spent 3 months time and together they deal with India's resource allocation, and each RM and business units in close cooperation, and their professional communication project details. They didn't have the mature experience either, but I learned a lot about how teams work together, what processes are in place, and what pitfalls might arise when scaling up.

Now that I think about it, I stuck with it because I saw the organization's tolerance for failure, and there was no easy way to change. In addition, the management team of the whole China area was relatively young at that time. Without any guidance, we overcame the difficulties and discussed the possibilities together.

After I came back from India, I immediately started to build a team. Half a year later, every large office had a full-time RM, and the small office also had part-time resource coordinators. In this process, I also have some thinking, because the work content is complex and changeable, so it is difficult to define the responsibilities of the people engaged in this job strictly, but the practice of this job is very exercise people's ability to resist pressure, strain ability, adaptability and sensitivity.

More importantly, the job offers insight into how professional services firms work.

A few years later, I was back in the business, working with a strategy consulting firm, and over a dinner conversation, I was able to clarify the allocation logic behind their team and help them figure out how professional services firms allocate resources. At that time, I thought of a word in the Dharma Hua Sutra, "Merit is not donated to the Tang Dynasty." What we have learned, what we have done, will come back to us in the form of experience one day in the future.

Today, it's nice to remember that the Staffing team still has important operational responsibilities at the company, and that it has some great leaders (leaders and managers).

I stayed in this position for three years until I went on maternity leave.

When I was still doing People Lead, one day, a female colleague confided to me that her child was less than one year old at that time. She said:

I feel guilty for my baby when I work overtime, and I feel guilty for my work when I stay with my baby at home. Why is it so difficult to be a female? I feel guilty for everything I do.

It was a situation I didn't yet understand. I understood after a few years, because I became a mother, too. Becoming a mother brings special attention to the topic of work-life balance, which is probably one that most working women cannot avoid. In one issue of "Wonderful Work Conference", Liu Nan, a powerful woman, was interviewed with five male ceos. The male ceos were asked questions about users and profits, while Liu Nan was asked, "How do you balance work and life?" This reveals a common perception in society and the workplace that men need to take care of themselves while women need to balance career and family.

After my maternity leave, I made another transition and was transferred to the internal IT department to do project management. There are five teams in total to serve the world. In fact, this transition decision is also considering my return after childbirth, a better smooth transition and made. I am familiar with the work in terms of content, but I still need to overcome some problems in practice. The biggest problem is jet lag. In a global team, many meetings take place either early in the morning or at night, which indicates that home meetings are the norm, and my children are too young to listen to any sense.

During meetings, I usually shut myself in the room and let him beat the door and cry. I can't be in one place either, but this will greatly affect my attention and efficiency. I feel I can't accompany him in my private time. Life is a complex of contradictions. The second issue was personal development, and because of the distractions of raising a small child, I actually made a decision to slow down my development.

It's a trade-off.

Facebook's chief operating officer, Cheryl. SangDeBo bestseller "step forward" in many ways is introduced, encourage women to break through barriers, completes the work life balance some women find this book really gave them a change, but there are some women can't do that, at the same time in the juggle work and family, they are both busy and anxiety, because most of the women's family and career are good, Because their spouse or older family members are carrying the burden for them.

In other words, the so-called balance is either a compromise made by oneself or a sacrifice made by the family.

Even Sandber notes in the book that she was able to work without worries because her husband shared many of the responsibilities at home.

This is actually one of the best ways to support women in the workplace.

Mentioned the particularity of my team, at the meeting in the evening if not very late, seven meeting at eight o 'clock I chose in the company, so I can in time to go to the gym at six o 'clock five running practice equipment, return to the company just in time for the meeting, on the way home I will feel refreshed and full force, My family is taking responsibility for this time. But on weekends, I devote myself to my children and my family.

So when it comes to balancing work and family, I'm lucky, I'm free, but I'm not far away from my family, because I have a very supportive family. But for some women, I might not be so lucky. There's a lot of advice on the Internet. If you can't balance, choose a character you want to be, at least for now. But no matter which one you choose, it means you have to give up the other one, don't be afraid, don't worry, be a fearless woman.

Sometimes think, our life is like a coordinate system, the horizontal axis has been set, the difference is how to play on the vertical axis, ten years can be very short, fleeting, ten years can also