Chapter 6 Which is better: Ali's flower name or Tencent's English name

The person who founded Alibaba with Ma Yun was the "Eighteen Arhats" in the lakeside garden.The fact that these people can gather in one room is not the result of Jack Ma's choice, but anyone who is willing to follow Jack Ma and get a monthly salary of 600 yuan can sit in that room.So this group of people can basically be regarded as a group of rabble. When Jack Ma received $25 million from Goldman Sachs and Masayoshi Son, Jack Ma believed that to be a world-class company, it is necessary to have a world-class talent team.So when he got so much money, he said to the remaining 17 "arhats": "We want to become a great company, and some of you can be squad leaders and some of you can be platoon leaders." , some people can at most be company commanders and regimental commanders. If we want to become an army, we must go outside to find division commanders and army commanders.” This was an idea that Ma Yun had from 2000 to 2001.

Ma Yun has been looking for some global talents to enter Alibaba for a long time. In 2006, Alibaba reached the threshold of time to go public in Hong Kong. Ma Yun felt that Alibaba's demand for international talents became more and more urgent. So around 2006, Ma Yun introduced a group of international talents from outside, including Wei Zhe (CEO of B&Q China), Wu Weilun (CFO of PepsiCo China), Zeng Ming (professor of Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business), Xie Wen ( Hexun CEO), Cui Renfu (Senior Vice President of Wal-Mart Department Store Group), Huang Ruo (CEO of Lotus), Wu Wei (Partner of KPMG Huazhen).

This is a group of outstanding young talents with two characteristics: first, most of them come from the Fortune 500; second, none of them come from Internet companies. These two points show that one of Ma Yun's major demands in recruiting this group of talents is, first, he needs senior international talents from the world's top 500 to help him.Second, he believes that in the Internet field, whether it is from the United States or Japan, there are actually no international talents. Therefore, talents from other mature international companies in the world's top 500 should be used to transform Internet companies and Alibaba. .This idea sounds brilliant, but it was actually another mistake Jack Ma made.

Most of these people have since left Alibaba. Among them, Wei Zhe, who once served as the executive vice president of Alibaba Group and the president of Alibaba's B2B business, made a sensation when he took the blame and resigned.The rest of the people, except Zeng Ming, have all left Alibaba now.Among this group of people, Xie Wen is the most interesting. He is the only one who is not from a Fortune 500 company, but he is the earliest Internet talent in China.Ma Yun once read a PPT speech by Xie Wen in Beijing. After reading it, he thought it was very good. Two months later, he was invited to be the CEO of Yahoo China.And Xie Wen announced his resignation a month after arriving in Yahoo China, which made Jack Ma very embarrassed.

In other words, this group of very good "airborne soldiers" will be "collectively killed" in Alibaba. Ma Yun has reflected on this matter himself. He posted this Weibo in 2012: "In 2001, I made a mistake. I told my 18 co-founders that they could only be group managers, and all All of my VPs had to be hired from the outside. Now 10 years later, all the people I hired from outside have gone, and the people I doubted their ability before have all become VPs or directors. I believe in two creeds—attitude More important than ability; choice is also more important than ability."

Then we can't help discussing a question: Why do these international talents "collectively die" in Alibaba? The first reason, I think, is cultural exclusion. Alibaba has two very important cultures, the first one is called martial arts culture.Everyone knows that Ma Yun likes to read Jin Yong's martial arts novels very much, so when you arrive at his company, you will find all the offices and meeting rooms with signs from Jin Yong's novels, such as "Huashan Lunjian" or "Xiaoyaofeng" and so on.What is even more exaggerated is that every executive of Alibaba has a nickname, and most of these nicknames come from Jin Yong's novels.

For example, Ma Yun's flower name is Fengqingyang, Lu Zhaoxi's name is Temujin (Genghis Khan), Zhang Yong's name is Xiaoyaozi, Zhang Yu's name is Yuyan, Wu Yongming's name is Dongxie, Zhang Jianfeng's name is Xingdian... and some people's names are The names of swords—because all the names of people have been taken away, only some names of swords remain. It can be seen that Alibaba has a strong martial arts culture.However, when these CEOs from multinational companies were poached into a Chinese company, but were told to suddenly name them "Xingdian", he might feel a little awkward in his heart.

Another Internet company in China, Tencent, also has its unique culture, that is, it takes an English name.From the first day of starting a business, Ma Huateng was called Pony in the company, Zhang Zhidong was called Tony, Chen Yidan was called Charles, Xu Chenye was called Daniel, Wu Xiaoguang, who later worked on e-commerce, was called Free, and Ren Yuxin, the current CEO of the Interactive Entertainment Department, was called Mark.So when you enter Tencent, what you hear most is what Pony said, what Tony said, and what Mark said.What to do when there is a second Tony?If the surname is Zhang, it is called Tony Zhang; if the surname is Ma, it is called Tony Ma.But what if another Tony Ma comes in?Then just change the English name.Everyone in Tencent has an English name.None of the founders of Tencent has studied abroad, but it has an international culture.

Of course, these people in Alibaba have never studied abroad, but they all have a group of names from Jin Yong's martial arts novels.Martial arts culture itself is iron-blooded and playful. This kind of chivalrous culture that defies all rules is a heresy for those senior managers from the world's top 500, so from the cultural level, it is difficult for these people accept.