Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
课代表立正的官方Podcast
深度访谈，有用干货，亲身验证的「真本事」
Superlinear Academy创始人，Maven Top AI Instructor
前Statsig布道师（OpenAI收购），腾讯副总监，Meta，Amazon；康奈尔经济学博士
社区：Superlinear.Academy
课程：ai-builders.com
个人：lizheng.ai
are one of the most successful and
popular m instructor your course is $900
and you have another executive course
that is 2500 so anything you share is
actually highly valuable and probably
people need to pay money to listen to
this and before you were uh doing this
amendment course you were Amazon VP
leading I believe more than 800 people
and you wrote a sentence very important
sentence in the Amazon leadership
principle all those things are true yeah
some things about work of course change
with time some things will never change
uh meaning as long as we're still
working with people um human nature uh
hasn't changed a lot some technical
experts are building monuments to their
own expertise they're focused on is this
an elegant algorithm am I solving the
hardest problem am I using the newest
technology but that doesn't actually
necessarily help the business progress
so I sent you the agenda but uh I think
this is how I think can be most helpful
to the audience of my channel there are
two challenges that I I sense a lot of
people face first are the experiences we
hear from successful leaders like you
are still relevant in today's age
especially you know there are less
opportunities in the tech industry is
growing slower that's the perception so
like people feel okay I hear a lot of
about a lot from uh gurus or exective
coach that speak to their experience but
not necessarily to my experience uh
because there are so much fewer
opportunities so that is kind of a
problem number one and problem number
two is many people do not enjoy their
work I feel the sense is like well I
guess a little bit about myself I
graduated 27
from Cornell as a econ PhD and then
joined Amazon for two years so 2017 to
2019 as a economist and then moved to
meta as a data scientist for two years
went back to China joined tensent tent
games for two years Vice director for
data science and manage 30 people
but I
shared this feeling with many people
that before the P pandemic like 20
before 2019
especially uh people like to enjoy their
work and uh the moral the vibe is pretty
good office is a place that energize you
but after pandemic especially with
hybrid working and the slow down the
layoffs many people start to feel stuck
in their work and do not enjoy going to
work anymore so that's kind of the two
overarching problem and I know you must
have so many experiences uh in this I
think I don't I don't know if we should
do a quick introduction if I should do a
quick introduction about you and then
you
can yeah it's up to you I mean I I love
those topics I'm happy to talk about
them I do have strong opinions about
them um you know as for an introduction
that's for what you feel helps your
channel most so uh I I I knew you
through uh M and linking and you are one
of the most successful and popular m
instructor so and your course is I
believe is $900 and you have another
executive course that is 2500 so
anything you share is actually highly
avilable and probably people need to pay
money to listen to this and before you
were uh doing this am mment course you
were Amazon VP leading I believe more
than 800 people and you wrote a sentence
very important sentence in the Amazon
leadership principle all of those things
are true yeah I worked 15 years at
Amazon from 2005 to
2020 um probably best known there for
helping start Prime video and then also
helping start Prime gaming um and I
spent 12 years in startups before that
though so I also have startup experience
albeit kind of one generation back uh
and now I work for myself uh teaching
others what I learned cool yeah we have
learnings from successful people but are
do those learnings still apply to
today's uh working environment or the
today's
challenges yeah so that's of course a
hugely broad question and if you after I
say a little bit about it if you want to
specialize or follow up I invite you to
um but uh some things about work of
course change with time some things will
never change uh meaning as long as we're
still working with people
um human nature uh hasn't changed a lot
of a lot of things about how to work
well with people maybe now called
emotional
intelligence I find you can find
references to them in you know the
ancient wisdom of any of the great world
religions for example so I often will
find
myself um
quoting you know long dead Scholars on
how to interact with people so something
as an example since you talk about a
Chinese audience uh that comes I believe
from L zoo is the master does the
non-doing and everything falls into
place there is there is uh a lesson to
be drawn today still from that of course
people also focus on like learnings from
The Art of War and other you know uh
ancient masters of how things work so I
think human interaction there's plenty
to be learned not just from leaders my
age who are still alive but also from
historical leaders if anything has
changed yeah go ahead oh sorry I was so
the tactics change but the wisdom is the
same wisdom but people needs to need to
learn the wisdom you need yeah you need
to figure out how to apply those so for
example um obviously most of those
leaders any place in the world World
grew up in a time of face-to-face
communication now we have hybrid
distributed workforces that's a little
bit different um and so you have to
think about how do you apply this wisdom
maybe in a hybrid environment you know
obviously if we think of uh Sun Su who
wrote Art of War he wasn't thinking
about time zones right he didn't have
this like follow the sun model you know
so um we have some new Problems But to
answer your fundamental root
question I don't
think building relationships and
coordinating groups of people has
fundamentally changed the the challenge
of organizing a group of people to get
something
done remains
uh largely
similar definitely some of the tools and
tactics need to evolve
that's very interesting not because you
know uh what's changed what's not
changed but because what you think the
quest of the problem is you you you
summarize as uh you know managing
relationship and coordinating people but
when I think about this I was like
especially trying to emphasize with with
a lot of IC or land managers like staff
level IC senior level IC they think
there are not many promotion
opportunities uh so they don't think
about this people or they don't think
people is the important part as long as
I do the job well or I have a high scope
project or I have you know a certain
domain uh I have certain opportunities I
get promoted but seems like you feel the
other part is the more important aspect
of this well it's it's not surprising
because I went into Personnel leadership
very early I I did
once I left graduate school I was in ic
for less than one year before going into
management for the rest of my career so
it's not surprising I emphasize that but
um one thing I find ic's make a
mistake there are limited promotion
opportunities but there are not none and
ic's make a mistake which is they think
that hard work and Technical expertise
are the only things required
um and in fact the people making
decisions about
promotions and and who gets those
opportunities usually number one there's
a lot of people who have at least
technical competence
meaning uh several people may be good
technically or with their skills or have
a good scope project
so having a little bit better skill may
not be enough to set you apart versus
having a good working relationship with
the manager having shown that you can
add value not just by your technical
skill but by your ability to relate that
technical skill to business value makes
a big difference
because as an engineer and as someone
who led a lot of
Engineers some technical experts are
building monuments to their own
expertise they're focused on is this an
elegant algorithm am I solving the
hardest problem am I using the newest
technology but that doesn't actually
necessarily help the business progress
in other words a working hack and an
elegant algorithm may have the same
business value some people are stuck in
the mindset but I've done better work if
I came up with an elegant algorithm well
maybe but it's not necessarily going to
be tied to
promotion um you know uh so so even for
ic's I often coach
ic's um that to move up you need to
think Beyond personal technical
performance or even scope of the project
because so much of it is trust
relationship and ability to relate your
technology to business
value yeah and uh there are other guests
on my channel that that spoke the same
message but I find like people like
there of course people start paying
attention but it's hard to do for some
reason or maybe it's uncomfortable to do
uh so like you put like you raise the
awareness uh that you need to pay
attention to the business value you need
to pay attention to connections
relationship but then there's no
textbook there is no right or wrong like
if you have a elegant AR
you know his Elegance that code is there
but then and do other things you'll
enter the domain of uncertainty I think
the uncertainty is the painful part as
is there a way to help you guide through
the uncertainty and kind of have a at
least a feedback loop of knowing am I
doing right or wrong because there are
so many factors
can yeah so I'm going to answer your
question but with a little bit of
background first I think our school
system
creates some of the behavior because if
you think about everyone began in school
and school has like very clear
assignments and you get grades on them
and you're taught that there's a right
and wrong and higher marks are better
and all of that encourages a push
towards the sort of measurable
scientific or pseudo scientific but the
the the the firmly measured and we get
good at that
everyone at a top
company has gone to a good school and
they've striven they've worked hard to
get top marks so they're very skilled at
that because actually they started
training and doing it maybe as young as
five but definitely a 10 years old 12
years old 15 years old and they have
years of training when you move to this
fuzzy domain they have no training and
it's very uncomfortable because it may
be uncomfortable for their personality
but it's also
unfamiliar um so then your question is
how do you persist in doing it or maybe
how do you measure
it I don't know is there's a good way to
like
convert relationship to a
measurement um but
there I mean you've asked a really good
question um how do you take this fuzzy
area and know how you're doing and the
feedback signals are very
soft they
the feedback
signals come in the form they come
inform formally of someone telling you
that was helpful or that's a good idea
or or could you advise us on this
project one of the ways I have said that
senior ic's can know they're
influential is when is their opinion
being sought out when it's not their
project in other words if is someone
coming to ask you about
your
um ask for your opinion when it's not
your work that's a huge sign of
influence is we'd like your advice
because you're a good advisor now how do
you get
there that's a different question but if
you're being asked to give your input on
things outside your direct work the more
you're being asked to do that the more
you've succeeded in
being influential and valuable to the
business
nice