Zhang Yiming

Five Traits of Excellent Young People I've Encountered

young people have many advantages: they don't set rigid boundaries in their work, they don't have too much ego to protect, they often break conventions, they are very hardworking, uncompromising, and not overly worldly-wise.

People who 'Stay young' basically haven't hit a ceiling and continue to grow.

张一鸣 Zhang Yiming

the founder of ByteDance and the original creator and CEO of both Douyin/TikTok and Jinri Toutiao

Born in April 1983 in Yongding District, Longyan City, Fujian Province, Zhang Yiming is of Hakka descent. He graduated from Nankai University in 2005 with a degree in Software Engineering.

His career began in 2006 when he joined Kuxun.com, where he focused on vertical search for travel content. In September 2008, he joined Wang Xing's team as a technology partner, overseeing search functions for Fanfou.com and Hainei.com. After resigning as the CEO of 99fang.com in 2011, Zhang embarked on his fifth entrepreneurial venture on January 29, 2012, founding the company ByteDance.

Under his leadership, ByteDance launched a series of highly successful products. This began with the experimental app "Neihan Duanzi" in May 2012, followed by the groundbreaking news aggregator "Jinri Toutiao" in August of the same year. The company's global expansion started with "TopBuzz," the overseas version of Toutiao, in August 2015.

ByteDance's most significant impact came with the launch of the short-video app Douyin on September 20, 2016, which was followed by its international counterpart, TikTok, in 2017.

Zhang Yiming has received numerous accolades, including being named to the list of "100 Outstanding Private Entrepreneurs in the 40 Years of Reform and Opening-up," TIME's 100 Most Influential People in the World, and Fortune's lists of "China 40 Under 40" and "China's 50 Most Influential Business Leaders."

H

ello everyone！

You are all very young, and I felt a bit of pressure coming here today. It's been almost 11 years since I graduated, and seeing you all really makes me feel that

"the new generation surpasses the old."

Last year, I participated in a campus recruitment event in Wuhan, and I felt that the quality of the new generation of young people is indeed very good. Yesterday, I was thinking about what I should share with you today. After some thought, I decided to first draft the title, changing Steve Jobs’

"Stay hungry, Stay foolish" to "Stay hungry, Stay young."

I want to share with you my work experience and insights since graduation. Additionally, as an interviewer, I have probably interviewed close to 2,000 young people in the past 10 years.

Some of them worked with me in the same company, while others went to different companies. Their development has varied greatly. In algorithmic terms, we call these "positive examples" and "negative examples."

I want to share why there is such a big difference in development between

"positive examples" and "negative examples."

Stay

Hungry,

Stay

Young.

"Stay hungry”, everyone knows, means

curiosity, a thirst for knowledge, and ambition.

But why "Stay young"?

I think young people have many advantages: they don't set rigid boundaries in their work, they don't have too much ego to protect, they often break conventions, they are very hardworking, uncompromising, and not overly worldly-wise.

10 years have passed, and some young people still maintain these excellent qualities. I think this counts as "Stay young."

People who "Stay young" basically haven't

hit a ceiling and continue to grow

. Conversely, many people improve their skills after graduation but stop growing once they reach a certain ceiling.

don't set rigid boundaries in their work

don't have too much ego to protect

often break conventions

very hardworking

uncompromising

not overly worldly-wise

Personal Experience -

The Start of Rapid Growth

Let me first share my personal experience: how did I become a supervisor managing a team of 40-50 people in my second year after graduation?

In 2005, I graduated from Nankai University and joined a company called Kuxun. I was one of the earliest employees, starting as an ordinary engineer. However, in my second year of work, I was managing a team of 40-50 people in the company, responsible for all backend technology, and also handled many product-related tasks.

Someone asked me:

why did you grow so quickly in your first job?

Was it because you performed exceptionally well at that company?

Actually, no.

The company's hiring standards were also very high at that time. Among those who joined at the same time as me, I remember there were two PhDs in Computer Science from Tsinghua University.

So, was I the best technically? Was I the most experienced? I found that I was neither. Later, I thought about what traits I had at that time.

Taking Initiative,

No Distinction Between "My" Work and "Others'"

Continued

- Driven by Interest and Expanded Responsibilities

When I worked, I

didn't distinguish between what I was supposed to do and what I wasn't

. After finishing my own work, for most colleagues' problems, if I could help solve them, I would.

At that time, I had read most of the code in the Code Base. When new employees joined, as long as I had time, I would explain it to them. Through explaining, I also grew.

Another characteristic was that in the first two years of work, I basically went home around 12 or 1 AM every day, and I would continue programming quite late after returning home. This was genuinely due to interest, not because the company required it.

So I quickly moved from being responsible for a web crawler module to being responsible for the entire backend system, then leading a small team, then a small department, and later a large department.

No Boundaries, Proactive Contribution

In-depth Learning, Willing to Share

Interest-Driven, Deep Commitment

Rapid Growth, Expanded Responsibility

Breaking Job Boundaries,

Driving Comprehensive Development

I was an engineer at the time, but my experience participating in product development was very helpful for my later transition to product management. My involvement in the business side has also been very helpful for my current work.

But I want to say:

your sense of responsibility, your motivation to do things well, will drive you to do more and allow you to gain significant experience.

I never set boundaries in my work.

At that time, I was responsible for technology, but if there were product issues, I would actively participate in discussions and think about product solutions. Many people would say that this was not their responsibility.

I remember at the end of 2007, I went with the company's sales director to meet clients. This experience taught me what constitutes good sales. When I was building Toutiao and hiring people, these reference cases prevented me from being completely ignorant in this field.

Learning by Doing

Transferable Experience,

Improved Judgment

These were my characteristics when I first graduated.

Later, I successively joined various startup teams. In this process, I worked with many graduates, and I still keep in touch with many of them.

Let me share some of the good and bad situations I've observed.

To summarize, what are the traits of these excellent young people?

Trait-1 Proactive Learning,

Expanding Skill Boundaries

First, be curious and able to proactively learn new things, new knowledge, and new skills.

Today, I won't be too modest and will use myself as a positive example, and then mention a negative one.

I have a former colleague who had a good theoretical foundation, but he always finished his work and left for the day. He stayed at this company for over a year but never bothered to learn about new technologies or tools available online. So he was very dependent on others.

When he wanted to implement a feature, he needed someone to help him with the latter half, because he could only do the first half himself. If he had been curious and had at least some understanding of frontend, backend, and algorithms, he could have done a lot of debugging and analysis on his own.

Trait-2

Optimism

: Embracing Uncertainty, Daring to Try

Second, maintain optimism in the face of uncertainty.

For example, in the early days of Toutiao, I told everyone: we aim to achieve 100 million daily app launches. (Of course, it's more than 100 million now). Many people thought, how could a small company like yours possibly achieve that? Only large companies can do it well. So they didn't dare to try hard.

Only optimistic people will believe and be willing to try. Actually, it was the same when I joined Kuxun. That company wanted to build the next-generation search engine (it ultimately didn't succeed and only did vertical search for travel).

I don't know what others thought, but I myself felt very excited. I wasn't sure I could do it, nor did I know how, but at that time, I just learned and looked into all related things.

I felt that even if it didn't succeed in the end, or wasn't fully achieved, the process itself would be very helpful—as long as you maintain optimism about the uncertainty of things, you will be more willing to try.

Trait 3

Unwillingness to be Mediocre:

Setting Lofty Goals

Third, be unwilling to be mediocre.

All of us here are already very outstanding among our peers. But I want to say that after entering society, you should set even higher standards. I have seen many very talented people among my classmates during university and colleagues I've worked with, whose technical skills and achievements were better than mine.

But 10 years later, many of them have not met my expectations: I thought they should have done very well, but they didn't. Many people, after graduation, no longer set high goals. I looked back and found that some colleagues joined IT departments of banks: some joined right after graduation, and some joined after working for a period. Why do I connect this with "unwillingness to be mediocre"?

Because many of them joined to quickly resolve their Beijing Hukou (household registration) issue, or at that time, some institutions offered housing subsidies, allowing them to purchase affordable housing.

If a person, upon graduation, sets their goal as buying a small two-bedroom or three-bedroom apartment within Beijing's Fifth Ring Road and spends all their energy on this, then their work will be greatly affected. Their behavior will change, and they will be unwilling to take risks.

For example, I've seen former friends who do part-time jobs in their spare time to earn some income. Those part-time jobs actually have no technical content and affect their main job, impacting both their career development and their mental state.

I asked him why, and he said, "Well, to quickly make money for a down payment." I think he seemed to be gaining, but he was actually losing.

Trait 4 -

Not Arrogant,

Delayed Gratification

Fourth, don't be arrogant; have delayed gratification.

Negative Example

Here I'll give a counterexample: two young people who impressed me quite a bit. Their quality and technical skills were pretty good, and they both had their own characteristics.

I was their supervisor at the time and found that their work delivery was consistently poor. They felt that other colleagues were doing worse than them, but that wasn't actually the case.

They could indeed be considered in the TOP 20% of the colleagues recruited at that time, but they mistakenly believed they were in the TOP 1%. So, they were unwilling to do more basic work, such as creating a debugging tool, or they didn't cooperate well when they needed to work with colleagues.

Positive Example

Originally, they were very talented individuals, very smart, and had strong practical skills, but they didn't control their arrogance. I don't think this contradicts "unwillingness to be mediocre." "Unwillingness to be mediocre" means you should set high goals; "not being arrogant" means you should be down-to-earth about your current situation.

Among these 2,000 samples, I've seen many whom I initially thought were very good but didn't develop as well as I imagined. And some whom I initially thought weren't good actually exceeded my expectations. Here, I'll also give an example:

At that time, we had a colleague working on products, also recruited as a fresh graduate. Everyone thought he wasn't particularly smart, so he was assigned some relatively auxiliary tasks, like compiling statistics, analyzing user bounce rates, and so on. But now, he is a vice president of a billion-dollar company.

Later, I thought about it, and his characteristics were that he was willing to do things, was responsible, never shirked responsibility, and whenever he had the opportunity to take on a task, he always did his best.

He didn't do exceptionally well every time, but we always gave him feedback. After he joined that company, he started by taking charge of a marginal channel with less than 100,000 users and made this channel better and better.

Because it was a marginal channel, it wasn't equipped with a complete team, so he took on many responsibilities himself and gained a lot of experience.

Trait 5 -

Good Judgment on Important Matters

Fifth, have good judgment on important matters.

You need to have your own judgment when choosing a major, a company, a career, or a development path. Don't be swayed by short-term choices.

Some of the examples above also cover this point.

For example, at that time, many people wanted to go to foreign companies and were unwilling to join emerging companies. In 2006 and 2007, many junior and senior schoolmates asked me for career advice. I always advised them to go to Baidu, not IBM or Microsoft. But in reality, many people made decisions based on short-term considerations: foreign companies might have a bigger name or slightly higher salaries.

Although everyone has heard this principle many times, a salary difference of three or five thousand yuan right after graduation is really negligible. Short-term salary differences are not important. But in reality, not many people can break free from this and have good judgment.

“This is what I wanted to share with you.”

This article is from Zhang Yiming's message to R&D and product department fresh graduates at the "2016 Toutiao Bootcamp."