Author | Yu Kui and Xu Xiaofei
Editor | Wang Yafeng
Leifeng net exclusive news, recently, Dharma courtyard and Ali cloud business line of a number of P11, P12 executives have changed their positions.
At the Dharma House.$BABA (BABA.US) $$BABA-SW (09988.HK) $Hua Xiansheng (P11), group vice president and head of Dharma's urban brain laboratory, left last Friday, and Zhang Lei (P11), a senior urban brain researcher who partnered with Hua Xiansheng, also left Dharma at the end of last year.
The city brain laboratory will be headed by Zhou Jingren (P12), vice president of the Dharma Institute and one of BABA's highest-ranking computer scientists.
In the Aliyun business line, Xiao Lihua (P11), vice president of BABA Group and dean of Aliyun Research Institute, also left to start a business on May 7.
At the same time, Ren Geng (P11), the former president of Aliyun China, who chose to remain in office, was newly appointed this week: Aliyun's former traffic products division merged and upgraded with video cloud to form a media and converged communications division, led by Ren Geng.
Prior to this, the video cloud was led by BABA technology veteran Lin Hao (Bi Xuan), who joined Taobao, the most critical period of the technology iteration, in 2007, along with Xiaoxie, Zhang Wensong, Zeng Xianjie, Zhu Hong, Qianhui, Cen Wenchu, Yu Feng and others, who have made great contributions to supporting the growth of Taobao's ultra-high traffic. Left to start a business in August last year.
In 2021, BABA changed the plate responsible for Zhang Jianfeng into "Cloud and Technology Plate" in the organizational structure upgrade, including Aliyun, Dharma House, Nail, Smart Internet (Tmall Spirit), and flat-headed Brother.
Leifeng Network (official account: Leifeng Network) learned that Aliyun and Dharma House have carried out personnel division since the end of last year, dividing some of the Dharma House's mature product technology into Dharma House, and then Dama House operates in a more independent form.
1. The urban brain laboratory has entered the era of Zhou Jingren.
The urban brain, proposed by Wang Jian, is a gold-lettered signboard that Ali Yun has been playing for many years. After Wang Jian withdrew from the front line of BABA, the urban brain laboratory led by Hua Xiansheng and Zhang Lei became the successor of Wang Jian's will.
The laboratory is also the only laboratory in Dharma with two P11 experts in charge, with a high internal status.
The retirement of Wang Jian and the departure of Hua Xiansheng and Zhang Lei represent that the urban brain has officially entered the era of Zhou Jingren.
Zhou Jingren, who joined Aliyun in 2016 and became chief scientist, was transferred to Taobao to report to Jiang Fan and Cheng Li shortly after the establishment of the Dharma Institute in 2019. Quite happily, although Zhou reported to Jiang, Zhou Jingren of P12 was one level higher than Jiang Fan of P11 at that time.
At the end of 2020, Zhou Jingren moved to Ant Group, but the ant never officially announced it, and Zhou Jingren did not appear on Ant's official website.
Just over a year later, Zhou Jingren returned to the management of the Dharma Institute to be in charge of the city brain laboratory as vice president.
In addition, last year, the City brain Lab also welcomed IEEE Fellow, former director of Ping an Science and Technology Washington Research Institute, Lu Le (P10).
2. Behind the change of Dharma House: a bold experiment of laboratory management innovation.
In fact, it is not surprising that Hua Xiansheng, Zhang Lei, Jin Rong, Wang Gang and others left their jobs.
At present, domestic AI scientists leave big factories, return to academia or start a business has become the norm in the industry.
But in this normalization, there is no lack of particularity: the Dharma Institute conducted an unprecedented laboratory management innovation experiment in 2021.
As Aliyun rushed to the 90 billion target last year, Dharma's cash-capable team also tried to actively challenge 10-figure revenue figures for the first time, with urban brains accounting for a certain proportion.
In the specific way, some of the innovative products developed by Dama Institute are sold through Aliyun's business line. Aliyun business line and Dharma House implement the double calculation model.
There are usually two models for research institutes of technology giants at home and abroad to make revenue:
First, partnering with the ToB team to earn customers' money: put the research institute into the ToB department, do technical support for the solution team, and part of the revenue received by the ToB department needs to be allocated to the research institute. But there will be no mandatory assessment of performance.
The second way to make money, that is, the form of outsourcing: if there is a demand in the business unit of the group, it will send the demand to the research institute, and the research institute will charge the business unit according to the number of people invested and the amount of server used.
Dharma House belongs to the first kind, but it is also different from the first kind: after the restructuring of the cloud and technology industry group last year, Dharma House is relatively more independent, and its binding with Aliyun becomes weaker.
This situation has both advantages and disadvantages.
The downside is that by throwing some of the Dharma team into the commercial war, the pressure on scientists is clearly unprecedented.
But the good thing is that it allows those who hear the sound of gunfire to direct the battle. This is also similar to Ren Zhengfei's methodology in recent years.
Ren Zhengfei said in his speech in 2019: if our algorithm team wants to go directly into the project, it will be easy to break through if we have both algorithms and data on the front line. You organize excellent doctors to form a Google-style legion, and if you jump on it, you may tear the hole open. Abstract platform must have practical things to test, more than a few specific platforms, integrated will have an abstract platform. Don't be locked up in the deep palace courtyard, go to the battlefield and perform meritorious service, and you may be promoted from second lieutenant to major general. I hope your Google Legion can take the lead in finding a way out, and I will come to see you if it succeeds.
In fact, in recent years, many large companies have been trying to reform the research institutes so that their technology can not only stand up to the sky, but also stand up and make money honorably.
But how to find the right balance between spring snow and field land? Even for companies with decades of management experience in research institutes, such as Microsoft Corp and IBM, it is still a cross-century problem.
Too much spring snow, is tantamount to an enterprise to build a university, input only can not get out, there is a back business law.
Too much in the field, the rich fireworks naturally can not attract the top technical personnel.
The management model is the same as the technical architecture, and it can never be designed once and for all. But through continuous experiments and grinding pressure test, to infinitely approach the balance between spring snow and the field.
The adjustment of the Dharma Institute's management mode last year was undoubtedly a bold grinding and pressure test, grinding stones into a river that had not been waded before.
Although under the pressure of performance, the quality of the products developed by Dama Institute is uneven, some Aliyun sales lines are quite angry about this. But this is the process that must be experienced to approach the optimal equilibrium point.
It is always better to face a problem than to avoid it. It is also better to correct mistakes than not to admit them.
As a matter of fact, after more than a year of testing and grinding pressure tests, the Dama Institute has begun to make some adjustments this year, and the laboratory is no longer carrying revenue KPI, moving towards a balance point.
3. Hua Xian beats him.
There is no doubt that Hua Xiansheng wins the most discussion in the circle of scientists about this personnel change.
There is an unwritten consensus in the corporate executive recruitment market that scientists with the attributes of both "technical vases" and "business economic men" are the most popular in the high-end recruitment market.
If a Fellow scientist whose technology is widely quoted and applied in academia and industry, at the same time, his technology can stand the test of large-scale engineering during the enterprise period, and the individual has excellent product ability, which is enough to make him stand on the commanding heights of great moves.
For example, Zhang Zhengyou, the inventor of Zhang's standard method, and Sun Jian, one of the authors of ResNet.
Hua Xiansheng, Zhang Zhengyou, Sun Jian and others who also meet the above conditions are the highest-paid AI experts in China, 2-3 times that of other IEEE Fellow scientists.
In the post-Wang Jian era, Hua Xiansheng, who can almost be equated with the four calligraphy and paintings of the urban brain, will not repeat his research achievements here. In the era of Hua Xiansheng, the urban brain achieved the landing of many cities.
Before that, in 2015, Hua Xiansheng team was responsible for the optimization of e-commerce image search technology to search for goods, which withstood the engineering test of 100 million during the Singles' Day holiday and became a phenomenal product.
Hua Xiansheng not only gives full play to the talent appeal that a scientist should have, but also brings product innovation to meet the engineering needs of technology landing and even make a profit.
In retrospect, during his stay in Dharma, Hua Xiansheng participated in the "China artificial Intelligence Security Summit" held by Leifeng Network for two consecutive years in 18 and 19. This stage is also the golden age of the urban brain. Large-scale visual applications from the field of transportation, public security, continue to migrate and sink to industrial, medical and other fields, to commercialization.
After the city brain was recognized by customers from all walks of life, Hua Xiansheng also filled in a song "like a Dream order": the road is far away and the wind is high, so there is no fear of dominating the road.
The outside world's interpretation of the departure of scientists is often somewhat biased.
They are just for the enterprise, for themselves to complete the phased mission, it is time to go to human life a section of the road, looking for a new answer.
Constantly looking for new answers is where the spirit of science lies.
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