Influence and Promotion Guide

Influence

If your product solves a problem, how do you persuade others? The key lies in telling your story well. Here, we introduce a classic theory—the SCQA Model, to help you structure your expression.

SCQA Model

1. S（Situation）Situation
   • Introduce from familiar situations or facts to establish a background for the audience.
2. C（Complication）Complication
   • Describe the contradiction or conflict between the actual situation and expectations, creating suspense.
3. Q（Question）Question
   • Asking a question: “What should we do facing such a conflict?”
4. A（Answer）Answer
   • Providing a solution and clearly explaining its value and advantages.

Example:
S: Our system processes millions of requests every day, and user performance requirements are becoming increasingly high.
C: However, the existing architecture often experiences delays during peak times, affecting user experience.
Q: How can we improve system performance and stability? A: We designed a completely new distributed caching architecture, successfully reducing latency by 50%.

Through this structured expression, information can be clearly conveyed and the audience can be moved.

Promotion & Defense Key Points

In the workplace, solving problems does not necessarily lead to promotion, as promotion requires recognition and defense (face-to-face evaluation). Here are the key points:

Key Recognition Points

1. Proactive Principle

• Proactive Communication: Regularly share work progress, ideas, and intentions, and listen to feedback and suggestions.
• Proactive Reception: Stay informed about business developments (such as launch performance, technical architecture changes), and identify gaps and improvements from a promotion perspective.

2. Principles of Growth

Continuously improve your skill points:

• Solution Design → Architecture Design → System Optimization
  • Gradually take on more complex tasks, demonstrating your growth trajectory.

3. Value Principle

Align with personal business and job requirements to learn knowledge that is valuable to the company, ensuring your contributions align with company goals.

SOP (Standard Operating Procedure)

1. Do well in the above three points, achieve results, and master the relevant skills.
2. Requirements for advancing to the next level.
3. Proactively take on work content for the next level and demonstrate competence in advance.

Key Evaluation Points

1. Self-introduction

• Team and business area.
• Current level and promotion level.

2. Current Responsibilities

• Scope of business responsible for.
• Whether it involves leading a team and the team size.
• Key responsibilities of the role.

3. Work Experience

• Employment duration/Company name/Highest position.
• Project experience (up to three).

4. Self-Introduction

Adopt the Pyramid Principle (explain what, defense explain why):

• What abilities were achieved?
• According to the “What to Learn” chapter, select complex jobs that are strongly related to the competency model.
• Long duration, large scale, high uncertainty, certain challenges and innovation.
• Core Argument:
• Example: Responsible for the architecture design of a large-scale project, successfully improved system performance.
• Supporting Arguments:
  • Attending conferences, article sharing, virtual team leader, participating in open source, etc.

STAR Model

• S (Situation): Summary nature (details when speaking).
• T（Task）：Focus on describing what you were responsible for and the role you played.
• A（Action）：The most core part, what you did (no need to write why you did it). Can use a diagram (architecture diagram, mind map) + a few key points to showcase.
• R（Result）：Efficiency, effectiveness, quality, cost. Combine tangible and intangible (quantitative + qualitative).
  • Example: Improved system performance, XX base increased from X to Y.
• First establish the base number, then calculate the ratio.
  • Use absolute values (from what to what, without expressing the ratio).
  • Related to money (cost).

5. Self-Reflection + Development Plan

• Define future development direction and demonstrate long-term value.
  • Example: Future plans include in-depth research on microservice architecture to further enhance system scalability and stability.

Defense Session

Distinguish Question Types

• What：Matters + Results.
• How：Methods + Steps.
• Why：Principles + Thinking (from business and technical perspectives, “Solving Problems” chapter, systematic and in-depth thinking).

Answering Principles

• Don’t say yes if you don’t know, avoid excessive speculation.
• Be clear and concise in your answers, highlight the key points.

Core Competencies

• Core Competencies:

• Understand the history of the problem: Gain an in-depth understanding of the technical background and implementation principles.

  • Flexibly apply technical skills: Be able to use technology as a “sword” and not be constrained by it (the realm of Feng Qingyang).
  • Problem-solving ability: Possess the ability to quickly analyze problems, find solutions, and implement them efficiently.

2. Why does the company want to give you a raise?

• Technological Leadership:

  • Ability to solve problems that others would take a long time or cannot solve.
  • Driving business development at the technical level, creating tangible value for the team and company.

• Key Points for Promotion:

• Made contributions beyond the scope of duties.

  • Proactively took on more responsibilities and achieved significant results.

3. How do you demonstrate your core competitiveness?

• Documentation and Solution Design:

• Document the issue, clearly recording the background of the problem, analysis process, and solutions.

  • The solution analysis is specific and comprehensive, ensuring rigorous logic.
  • The solution implementation is high-quality, with high code quality and superior performance.

• Code Quality:

• Non-redundancy: Avoid duplicate code and keep it concise.

  • Readability: Clear code structure with complete comments for easy understanding and maintenance by others.
  • Scalability: Flexible design for easy future feature expansion and optimization.

4. Behavioral Points: How to improve yourself and gain recognition?

• Communicate More:

  • Actively communicate with colleagues and leaders, listen to multiple opinions, and find the best implementation plan.

• Share Proactively:

  • Share your experiences and achievements with the team to help everyone grow together.

• Showcase Contributions:

• The team leader will evaluate your performance through code quality and contribution level.
• Provide a Concrete Example: Use real-life cases to illustrate your contributions, such as solving a complex problem or optimizing a critical process.
• Share Within the Team: Summarize successful experiences into documents or presentation materials and share them with the team.

Ability Model

| Dimension | Core Requirements | Detailed Explanation | Hierarchy |

|————|————————————————————————–|————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————–|————–| | Personality Traits | Needs to be bold and assertive | For individuals with red, green, and blue traits:
- Red: Passionate, strong, and always seeking more.
- Green: Paying attention to details.
- Superposition State: Schrödinger’s cat. An individual may exhibit certain traits more prominently, but they may possess multiple traits simultaneously. | | | Handling Relationships | Emotional Account; Avoid cross-level reporting/communication, easy to offend people. Be meticulous in dealing with others. Words can lead to trouble. | - Emotional Account: Maintaining interpersonal relationships is like depositing and withdrawing, requiring long-term trust accumulation.
- Cross-level Communication: Avoid cross-level reporting or communication, as it easily leads to misunderstandings and conflicts.
- Mindful Words and Actions: Pay attention to your words and actions to avoid problems caused by inappropriate expressions. | | | Visibility | Expressiveness; Writing Ability | - Expressiveness:
- Charts + Data + Information -> Data -> Message -> A Message.
- Don’t dive into details from the start; instead, go from the outside to the inside, from the general to the specific.
- Application Scenarios:
- Articles or Speeches:
- Who: For whom are you speaking? Set different titles based on roles.
- Why: Structure, logic, content.
- One chart, 6-7 minutes to capture attention. | Application Scenarios |

Maximizing time efficiency requires looking at the bigger picture, not just focusing on completing individual tasks. Have you efficiently improved your time efficiency today, grown rapidly, and thus created a quantitative difference from others?

From Huang Renxun & Wu Jun

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Technology

| Complexity | Core Requirements | Detailed Explanation | Technology Hierarchy |

| ——— | —————————————————————— | ———————————————————————————————————— | —- |

| Scale Complexity | Possessing team technology expertise, being a technical expert; end-to-end (review, design, coding, principles) capabilities | Includes technologies already used and potentially used | Before:
Service architecture (serverless, FaaS); frameworks (b/c-end, SSR) + engineering design (scaffolding); production safety (key points); R&D process design (documentation/productization);

Middle:
Material standards; tracking points ; sketch product design ; test cases ; lowcode/procode R&D tools

After:
Processed/productized anti-corrosion; monitoring; SQL/BI analysis; log/performance analysis | | Time Complexity | 6-12 months of technical planning | Technical planning: Integrating an understanding of business and industry technology development trends to make reasonable judgments and choices. OKR | | | Environment Complexity | Understanding of industry/company technology | Must conduct research. Includes company/industry frameworks, middleware, tools; | | | Innovation Complexity | Introduction of new methods, new technologies | New methods and technologies must focus on the value they bring to the business and team: new complexities, scenario limitations, and costs that new technologies may bring; code refactoring, automation; | |

Business

| Complexity | Core Requirements | Detailed Explanation | Method |

| — | — | — | — |

| Scale Complexity | Comprehensive understanding of the overall business system at the pre-event, in-event, and post-event stages. Judging criteria for determining if someone is reliable | | 5W1H8C1D | | Time Complexity | Predict the development direction of the business in June to December | Understand the underlying logic, able to provide ideas and suggestions;具备可扩展性 | OKR | | Environmental Complexity | Be familiar with the overall situation of competitors | Product differences, market position, competitors’ plans and strategies | | | Innovation Complexity | Able to propose some new requirements | Propose some business needs and ideas, provide advice for product design and product features | |

Management

| Complexity | Core Requirements | Detailed Explanation | Method |

| — | — | — | — |

| Scale Complexity | Management of a single team; Human resource assessment; Time assessment; Issue tracking; Risk prediction | Project team/virtual group of 3-5 people | PDCA theory; WBS; buffer (1.2~1.6 times) | | Time Complexity | Formulating project plans or team plans | | | | Complexity of the Environment | Team familiar with upstream and downstream | Team familiar with upstream and downstream, and maintain good relationships with the Team Leaders of upstream and downstream teams | | | Complexity of Innovation | Team-level optimization | Introduce new management methods/processes or measures to improve team efficiency and capabilities | |

Growth

| Dimension | Core Requirements | Detailed Explanation | Methods |

| — | — | — | — |

| Input | Learning Ability | | Basic Learning Process: 1 Select Direction 2 Obtain Materials 3 Filter Materials 4 Cognitive Acquisition -> Digestion -> Solidify Patterns 5 Solve Problems
Three-Step Rapid Learning Method: 1 Establish Overall Cognition: Speed Reading/Directory -> Draw Mind Map -> Write Down 2 Solve Problems, Build Networks 3 Supplement Knowledge, Deliberate Practice | | Output | Problem-Solving Ability; 4D Summary Method | Summarize the 4D Summary Method from technical, business, and management dimensions in stages. | |

Method of Doing Things

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Early Stage

• Do the right things

• Mid-term

  • 3C Scheme Design
    • Width Understanding Technology
  • PDCA Execution

• Define specific tasks, stage objectives, milestones, and responsible persons

  • 5S
    • Problem handling (clarify/locate problems 5W, quantify data, break down problems, solve problems 3C, execute actions PDCA)
  • 5W

• Business problem analysis + Deep understanding of technology + Management improvement

• Post-production

• 4D: 4 Dimensions (Results, Data, Technology, Growth)

  • Pyramid Reporting:
    • Overall Conclusion (Main/Secondary/Supporting Arguments)
    • Specific Analysis (Provide specific data and evidence)

• Key points + Follow-up improvement measures

Skill Levels

• Basic: Means being able to do something, able to complete basic tasks.
• Proficient: Means the ability to do something well, with high execution capabilities and quality assurance.
• Mastery: Means the ability to optimize something. Adopting different approaches, thinking, and tools to complete the same task and achieve breakthroughs. For example, introducing new technology into work also falls under the category of optimization.

COMD Model

The COMD Model describes an individual’s competency model from four levels of complexity and three dimensions.

Four Complexities

1. Scale Complexity

   • Involving lines of code, number of team members, number of features, number of stakeholders, number of systems, etc.
   • For example: managing a large distributed system or coordinating collaboration among multiple teams.

2. Time Complexity

   • Need to plan long-term goals, such as a 3-year business plan.
   • For example: Develop a technical roadmap to ensure technology and business development are aligned.

3. Environmental Complexity

• Including changes in the external environment (policies, market, competitors) and changes in the technical environment (technology stack upgrades, tool chain updates).
  • For example: Maintaining technical leadership in a rapidly changing industry.

4. Innovation Complexity
   • Manifested as innovation in theory, ideas, and techniques, divided into the following levels:

• From 0 to 1: Groundbreaking work, solving problems never encountered before.
  • Architectural Refactoring: Optimizing existing systems to enhance performance and maintainability.
  • Project Solution Design: Designing reasonable solutions to meet business requirements.
  • Coding: Efficiently implementing features while ensuring code quality and performance.

Three Dimensions

Competence can be assessed from the following three dimensions:

1. Technical

   • Technical depth and breadth, including mastery of programming languages, frameworks, algorithms, system design, and other aspects.

2. Management

   • Abilities in team collaboration, resource allocation, project management, and leadership.

3. Business

   • Understanding and driving business capabilities, including user needs analysis, market insights, and product design.

Wu Jun’s Engineer Model

According to the Engineer Model proposed by Wu Jun, an engineer’s capabilities can be divided into five levels:

1. Fifth Level: Can independently solve problems and complete engineering work

   • Possesses basic technical skills and can independently complete assigned tasks.

2. Fourth Level: Capable of guiding and leading others to accomplish more impactful work

   • Not only able to work independently but also able to guide others and lead teams to complete complex projects.

3. Third Level: Capable of independently designing and implementing products that achieve success in the market

   • Able to design and implement products from scratch and ensure their success in the market.

4. Second Level: Ability to design and implement products that others cannot (his role is difficult to replace)

   • Possesses unique core competitiveness, capable of solving high-difficulty problems, and his contributions are hard to substitute.

5. First Level: Pioneering an industry

   • Pioneers entirely new fields or industries, with disruptive influence.

How do you prove you’re good at something?

Similar to “how do you prove you’re rich,” you can demonstrate whether you truly master a skill or knowledge through the following aspects:

1. Comparison Ability: Just as wealth is proven through comparing assets, you can showcase your professionalism by comparing your solutions with others.
2. Quick Response: When you are familiar with a field, you can quickly form a clear line of thought when facing related issues and describe the steps to solve the problem.
3. Mental Map: True mastery means having a complete knowledge map in your mind, able to quickly explain “one, two, three” in a logical order.

Dimensions of a Person and Levels of Doing Things

Dimensions of a Person

• Reliable people: Do things well, complete tasks.
• Professional people: Cultivate themselves through their work, becoming experts in certain fields (driven by interest, physically diligent).
• Different people: Vision-driven, create their own works (mentally diligent).
• Extraordinary people: Determined, break through in thinking level and cognition (mentally diligent in terms of thinking framework).

Levels of Doing Things

1. Level 5: Independently solve problems and complete tasks.
2. Level 4: Guide and lead others, accomplish influential work.
3. Level 3: Independently design and complete products, achieve success in the market.
4. Second Level: Design and implement products that others cannot.
5. First Level: Create an industry.

• Why: Clarify the original purpose and meaning of what you do.
• How: Develop a specific execution plan.

P7 Competency Model

Business Understanding

What are the businesses; the current status, pain points, and challenges of the businesses

Core business performance indicators, the general level of data The requirements for technology, the opportunities that technology provides for business

1. Customer Language: From a Business Perspective

To better serve customers and communicate effectively with business stakeholders, we need to focus on the following key metrics and translate them into “customer language” to more intuitively demonstrate the team’s value and achievements.

Core Metrics

• Progress

  • Clarify the current completion status of the project and the achievement of milestones.
  • Regularly report on interim results to stakeholders to enhance transparency and trust.

• Risks

• Actively identify potential risks in the project (such as technical challenges, insufficient resources, etc.).

  • Develop contingency plans in advance to reduce the impact of uncertainty on the project.

• Employee Turnover

  • Focus on team stability, analyze reasons for turnover, and take measures to improve employee satisfaction.

• A stable team is the foundation for continuously delivering high-quality products.

• Bug Rate

  • Monitor online issues and defect density, optimize the development process to reduce the occurrence of bugs.
  • Enhance product quality through means such as automated testing and code reviews.

• R&D Efficiency

  • Measure the team’s delivery speed and responsiveness, such as demand delivery cycles, iteration frequency, etc.
  • Introduce tools and methodologies (e.g., agile development, DevOps) to enhance overall efficiency.

2. Differentiated Value and Technology Differentiation

In a highly competitive market environment, technology teams need to demonstrate their core competitiveness through differentiated value, thereby creating greater value for the business.

Building a Data Platform

• Data-Driven Decision Making

  • Develop a robust data platform to enable business units to quickly gain insights and make scientific decisions.

• Provides real-time data analysis, visual reports, and other functions to help business growth.

• Support for Polymorphic Business

  • Utilizes advanced technology productivity (such as microservice architecture, low-code platforms) to address complex polymorphic business needs.
  • Through a flexible technical architecture, quickly adapts to changes in different business scenarios.

Firmly Determine the Technical Direction

• Technological Innovation Leads Business Development

  • Continuously focus on cutting-edge industry technologies, selecting a technology stack that aligns with the long-term development of the business.
  • Maintain strategic resolve in technology selection to avoid resource waste caused by frequent changes.

• Technology Empowers Business

  • Transforming technological advantages into business advantages, such as enhancing user experience through AI technology or optimizing operational strategies through big data analysis.
  • The technology team is not just an executor but also a driver of business innovation.

Technology Solutions

Technical selection, consideration of business & technical characteristics,

Factors of R&D environment, setting technical goals, comparison with other solutions

Measurement of Results

How to measure results

Long-term

What technology and architecture should do to continuously create value

References

• Staff Engineer: Leadership Beyond the Management Track — Guide to growing influence as a senior engineer
• An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management — Will Larson — Book on engineering leadership and organizational design
• The Manager’s Path — Camille Fournier — Guide to tech leadership from engineer to CTO