Ray Cao: evaluation

Transcript context

…There are only two people and by that time the US and plus, I would say, Europe business together, we're having less than 80 people, but the business needs to grow and we need to hire really fast. The first mistake I made was... By the way, the goal is to hiring 100 people in a six month to support the go-to-market. That is the speed we're into. So that is early 2020 to middle of 2020. So within six months I need to hire, I would say, 100 people to supporting the global go-to-market structure and build everything. Then the first mistake I made just at the right point because we're trying to grow too fast and sometimes as a hiring manager I have to compromise the standard we're trying to hire. So that's the mistakes I think I made first and I think nobody should repeat that mistake is you need to always run for the quality rather than the quantity. So it's a easy mistake. You can fall into the trap because the business demands you to go faster. If you don't have the manpower, you won't be able to. But I would say, believe me when I say this, this is a pain, right, when you have the wrong people on the team, it's not necessarily going to make you move faster, it's going to actually slow you down. So that's one of the biggest mistake I made for my first year when I created the team and not necessarily myself only. So also the managers reporting to me, they're facing the same pressure and then it's cascading down. So it's definitely the mistakes we made at early stage. The second thing I can think about is really on the context, no control. It is not necessarily I'm born into, to be honest, because I was trained really like, "Hey, this is your box, finish your work here and then you're good." But the reason why I value that really the attitude more today is literally I failed at the very early stage of my time here because I was trying to creating that kind of a very black and white discipline for my team, "You can do this, you cannot do that." But technically speaking, that's literally slowing things down because a lot of times you can see that, "Hey, we're delivering our go-to-market strategy and we're good." But literally what you don't know is your goal is not to deliver the go-to-market strategy. Your goal is to land your go-to-market strategy with sales together. So if your job only is delivering, no, you're failed oftentimes because you're not really getting the market context, you're not even talking to your clients. So that was literally another mistake I think taught me how to really embrace the culture. Here is context, no control. not really getting the market context, you're not even talking to your clients. So that was literally another mistake I think taught me how to really embrace the culture. Here is context, no control. And the third piece, I think, it's also a mistake, really a hard moment for me as well is, for the past couple of years now, I've been managing a such big global organization, oftentimes even not myself, my managers, they don't have time to go detail and to go talk to the clients, which is very scary because again, if you don't know, you don't hear what is happening in the market, you won't know the details in the market, you won't be able to take the right movement or take the right approach to go to market or even give the feedback to the engineering team. So it's very important that the leader at any level needs to be situational. You cannot always down to the wheat and you cannot really distance yourself from the reality. So you need to find the balance to really get engaged and also see yourself out there to getting, I would say, getting deeper into the problems, to identify the problems, and then you're able to perform even better. Because I don't believe one thing is you are the pure, I was the people manager. You cannot do that because when you do that, you're very, very at the very, I would say, position to really thinking about your career because you're losing your competitive edge from the other, I would say equivalent talents in the market. I love these stories. I love stories of things not working out, so I appreciate you sharing these things. When someone doesn't work out at TikTok and they have a bad time and they get let go or they leave, what's the most common reason other than just they're not good enough? Is there something that just doesn't stick with people that often leads to this is not the place for me?…

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