An Open Letter from the Technical Director “To the Team, 5×RUBY Engineers in My Vision” (Part 1)
At the beginning of last year, the educational software coding program of 5×RUBY Company Ltd. became independent, allowing the company to fully concentrate on pursuing better technical research and development. At the same time, we also launched a whole new brand identity slogan, “We Deliver,” to convey the company’s internal strategies for team culture building and providing service values to customers while setting off on a new journey.
The software development at 5×RUBY Company Ltd. is dedicated to providing better technical solutions with the goal of becoming the best practice in the industry. From talent recruitment to project development, the company keeps on aiming to be the best.
For this goal, the technical director Zheng-Xian Qiu (Cang Shi Xuan Ye) specially wrote a letter to the development team to express his expectations for the team as the technical director, along with future directions that he plans to lead the team toward the future.
Reading through this letter together, we can gain a better understanding of the values that 5×RUBY Company Ltd. hopes to deliver in this digital age.
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Hey team,
Colleagues whom I’ve recently spoken to know that I am learning to better communicate with people. However, I have not yet discussed what I would like you to do from an engineer’s point of view. That is why I wrote these two articles about “attitude” to share with all of you.
Our Developer Attitude: One Step Better
Since we decided to use “We Deliver” as the company motto, everyone including management, supervisors, and staff have all been contemplating its underlying significance. What are we going to “deliver” exactly? In fact, most staff who have worked over a year are already equipped with the ability to fulfill customer requirements independently. Some exceptional new staff are also capable of completing most tasks at a particular level after a few months of learning. By this standard, have we achieved the goal of “delivery?”
This standard alone does not seem to match the “We Deliver” motto. We definitely did not choose to work at 5×RUBY Company Ltd. for the mere goal of “realization.”
That is why I would like to share with you, about what the management expects everyone to learn from the path I choose as the technical director. Many people may consider “technology” to be an important thing at 5×RUBY. However, this describes the outcomes without explaining why “good technology” matters.
From my personal development experience, I have always valued “attitude.” What is the attitude we apply to the codes we write, customer products, and our work performance? If you feel you are at a bottleneck or in a stagnant position, please think about whether your “attitude” has changed compared to a time when you grew rapidly in the past. Have you slacked off because the work became familiar, or did you stop learning after achieving the goal of finding a job? Did you give up on trying new possibilities due to a heavy workload?
Given the opportunity, I would love to share my perspective on “improvement” with you, but it may not be easy to capture the key point from just a casual chat. I want to convey a simple attitude: trying to do “one step better” is enough. There is no need to consider the differences with other people or their abilities. Just ask yourself a simple question, “Can I do any better?”
Some of you may have heard about my past experience of learning programming. During my 10-year learning process, I spent about five years working on the same type of function. It may appear as if I never learned anything new or created anything more challenging, but this foundation allowed me to grow quickly when I gained more knowledge later on.
Like the “learning” method I shared with you earlier, just practice more before looking for variations. Finally, simplify everything to extract all of the attempts and experiences. The extraction process requires you to reflect on “whether I can be better next time with this experience.” Do not simply reproduce your original thinking logic and programming codes to another project.
Although it sounds easy, it is actually quite difficult to apply such an attitude to work. Nevertheless, aren’t we motivated by the hope for a simple, happy life to keep looking for ways to simplify everything?