Meet CTW’s new VP of Engineering, Cao Zhe (Part 2)
Path to CTW
This is our series on the team working at CTW.
Today, we’re continuing last week’s interview with our new Vice President of Engineering. Zhe’s taking his wealth of experience bringing DevOps and Site Reliability Engineering to leading Japanese companies and applying everything he’s learned to CTW’s Japan No. 1 HTML5 business. If you’re considering a career as a developer or engineer with us, this one’s a peek at the future!
What convinced you to join CTW?
When I was contacted by our CHRO, I think what I was sold on was the ambition more than the potential.
CTW is already becoming pretty well known for the tech team here, right?
I saw that there was a good infrastructure, a strong & healthy globalizing business, and an excellent engineering team.
The leaders told me that, despite having all this in place already, they wanted to take it to the next level. They needed someone who could scale the G123 platform to a global level and deliver the best value to their users.
We also talked about how CTW intended to grow the team.
Our boss, the CTO, has a very ambitious mission. He said, "Help us grow the team. Help us make it second to none, the best tech team in Japan."?
I thought that was really cool. I’d never thought about what I would do if I had to build an entire engineering team, which made me look back at what I’d done in my career.
On the operations side, on the SRE side, basically on the internal infrastructure side, I’ve got a lot of experience now. But what a team should look like if we need top data scientists, product managers, QE…?
When I started thinking about that, it was exactly the kind of big challenge that really excites me.
So my answer was, "Okay, sounds fun!"
What surprised you in your first few months here?
So I’d already seen that the team was excellent, top-tier people.?
But what I really like is that everyone has very clear goals. We're clear on what we need to do and we move fast toward that. It’s definitely so much faster than all my previous companies.?
The decision-making is straightforward in that when a decision is made the team goes right into it. We’re able to change direction fast, try things out, and — if something doesn't work — we keep experimenting until we crack it.
I think this kind of cycle is very, very quick and satisfying compared to everywhere else. In bigger companies, there are processes and ways of measuring things that can slow developers down. But here, it's different. I think that quite surprised me.?
And another thing, the team is small but we have a strong culture. Everyone knows how to communicate with each other. Channels are open and there’s no hesitation. This is, again, very different from other companies.?
But it works. I'm not sure we’ve made it into the best version of itself yet. And now we’re working on seeing what works best and how we can make things even more efficient.?
I’m confident it’ll come soon.
Last, our boss has very clear expectations. He uses that to motivate the team and I think that's very good. In other companies, you know, the boss is pretty distant from the frontlines. At CTW, it's very close. That kind of hands-on approach is excellent.
The team definitely appreciates it.?
What do you hope to do next for the team and the company?
My plan is to make the engineering culture even healthier here.
We have our current culture in place. It's good. It works. But I'm also thinking about how we can make it more diverse. We need more diversity and different kinds of talents on the team.?
I want to make us more stable by plugging in missing skill sets and ways of thinking. Also, I’ll be introducing different ways of working to find out where we can boost the culture from the bottom up.?
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I totally understand and appreciate that we’ve got that startup mindset. And right now, we’ve specialized in a marketing-driven way of doing things. I think that's great. That's very healthy, a very good thing.?
So I want to see how we can implement that same dedication across other technically driven decisions. There’s a lot of potential for how we can help the company maximize the value we bring to our players.
To be clear, the tech team is already essential to many important parts of our business.?
But I think we can do even more than that. Right now, I’m also working on expanding the team’s scope and influence. Of course, we need healthy mechanisms and processes to become strong enough to do that.
Which is where I’ll be working hard to make the tech team even faster. I know they're terrific at this but we can reach even faster delivery while maintaining rock-solid consistency.
That's what the CTO is expecting and that's how we've been so successful in a very competitive market.
To make that vision happen, we need experts in different domains. On top of core skills, we expect our incoming talent to be good communicators and self-motivated.
One of the ways we're different from other companies is that we don't have enough resources or time to coach people and motivate them. Of course, we‘re going to provide great opportunities, resources, and an environment to grow fast. But we expect our talent to be driven and ambitious!
They’ll be the ones in the thick of it.
We provide the stage. You must rise to the occasion, be the best in your domain, and show that you can motivate yourself!
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For more information about our available positions, have a look below.?
We’re actively looking for talent in the following roles.
Ed Tech | Marketing & Communications Expert | Best-selling Author | Dad
2 年Zhe is an inspiration! Resume stacked with incredible achievements, and he's the picture of humility and inclusive leadership ?? ?? ??